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Solar Commons: A “Commons Option” for the 21 st Century
Abstract
Private ownership of nature’s gifts—water, air, sunlight—stands in the way of solving the collective problems of the 21st century. In the case of sunlight, common ownership through community solar trusts can overcome both the inequities and the inefficiencies of investor‐owned utilities (IOUs) with legal monopolies. Those monopolies function with the same arrogance as aristocrats did in the past, but now the stakes are higher: the future of the planet. This essay describes the Solar Commons Project by which a team of inspired citizens and public scholars joined to create a form of community‐trust solar‐energy ownership, in which multiple stakeholders benefit. The goal is to make this “Solar Commons” model an iterable, scalable, model of community solar that empowers low‐income neighborhoods in the United States. An integral part of the project is a process of creating community‐engaged public art to communicate the nature of community ownership. Artistic and theatrical presentations can help involve the public in dialogues around questions of utility management that are normally couched in technical language designed to obfuscate the political power of electric utilities. One role citizens can play is unmasking utilities when they publicly promote themselves as providers of clean energy, even when they are actively engaged in protecting the interests of fossil‐fuel companies. Ultimately, however, creating a Solar Commons involves more than criticizing the failed institutions of the past. It requires us to think innovatively about ways to draw upon the history of the commons to design new modes of sharing sunlight and other common goods to create a more equitable, sustainable future.
... The foregoing analysis suggests that, enabled by lower PV prices, members of the solar industry could become tenants' allies in devising PV installations and horizontal interconnections beyond the strictures of current state subsidy schemes. At the same time, Vojtěch's apparent acceptance of a singular wiring of a PV plant entails the risk that householders will be removed from participating in solar micro-generation, and that solar commoning even when it benefits disadvantaged communities primarily registers in terms of financial benefits generated from energy savings and/or the selling of excess electricity (Lennon 2017;Milun 2020). While such benefits are no doubt important, technoecological analysis underscores the importance of practical and sensual involvement through solar apps for sensing energetic connection, including electricity's unpredictability (Bennett 2010), and enabling more generative practices afforded by abundant solar radiation. ...
... Together with scholars and activists who argue that alternative sources of energy alone will not unsettle fossil-fuelled modernity with its constitutive relations of resource extraction and intersecting inequalities on the basis of race, geopolitical location, class and gender (Wilson 2018;Lennon 2017), this article participates in explorations of a possible solar commons (Gibson-Graham et al. 2016;Milun 2020). Yet, rather than starting from solar energy cooperatives or community trust funds, which do not exist in the Czech Republic, the article has examined solar infrastructure on brownfields and residential buildings as an immanent potentiality for solar commoning. ...
... Importantly, while these practices can both inform and be informed by solar community wealth funds (Milun 2020) and programmes to install solar power in low-income households (Gibson-Graham 2016), the potentials of solar commoning are not predicated on existing schemes. Minor tweaks can -and in fact already are -re-articulating nodes where relational elements expose their transformative capacity in the present, inviting articulation and solidarity through relational designs and horizontal connection. ...
In the context of accelerated climate crisis this article investigates the energetic-political possibilities of solar energy in the Czech Republic. In the absence of solar cooperatives, the article examines residential PV installations and a ground-mounted solar mono-plantation as a terrain for possible commoning. It proposes technoecologies as a framework and tool to not only focus on what solar infrastructure brings together, but also what is left out or disarticulated in specific arrangements but can be seen as infrastructure’s productive “limits” that entail possibilities for differential inclusion, regeneration, and care. Ethnographic technoecological analysis shows how unexpected plant growth within the plantation points to multispecies refuges transforming the electric monoculture, and how electrical rewiring could connect PV arrays to households in multiple occupancy buildings (paneláky) in ways that enable new forms of sharing and joyful squandering of electricity in times of energy abundance.
... Similarly, Milun and Baker emphasize the transformative potential of solar commons. Milun presents community-trust-based ownership models for solar assets, aiming to establish a 'commons-sector option' that empowers marginalized communities [81]. Baker highlights the significance of community solar initiatives in the United States and demonstrates how these projects can democratize energy production and ownership, benefiting low-income communities with affordable, sustainable energy solutions [82]. ...
The growing literature on energy commons suggests that reimagining energy as a common resource is critical for transitioning away from fossil fuel-based systems. However, conceptual and empirical fragmentation in this literature limits our understanding of energy commoning practices. Through a systematic review of 85 articles, we aim to unify the field by analyzing it across three dimensions: material, institutional, and cultural. Materially, we find a focus on energy production, distribution, and use, with less attention to renewable resource harvesting, upstream (e.g., mining), and downstream (e.g., waste management) operations. Institutionally, the emphasis is on local, community-driven initiatives and participatory governance, with limited exploration of multi-scale approaches and other institutional logics. Culturally, the research is centered on Western contexts, highlighting a need for broader geographic and theoretical perspectives. From our analysis, we identify five paradoxes in the literature: 1) inclusivity and exclusivity, 2) a Western focus and the pluriverse, 3) decentralization alongside the need for coordinated governance, 4) a focus on generation and distribution as well as a whole value chain approach, and 5) viewing commons as an alternative to capitalism while acknowledging their co-optation by capitalist systems. We propose pathways to navigate these paradoxes, suggesting integrated approaches to advance research and practice toward just and sustainable energy transitions. Future research should focus on how energy commons can be scaled, challenge prevailing structures, and be managed across the full value chain to ensure equitable and sustainable futures.
... The guest editors of this issue invite researchers, scholars, activists, and authors to For commons scholars and activists, creating a recognizable, practical, and enduring commons sector in the 21st century economy is a necessary part of the solution to the destruction and inequitable distribution of the earth's common wealth enabled by 20th century capitalist and state socialist systems (Berkes, 2008;Bollier, 2016;Federici & Linebaugh, 2018;Milun, 2020). An economy that is embedded within a ceiling of planetary boundaries and a foundation of social equity needs new institutions to enable and protect the work that communities can do to care for and share with each other and all of creation (Raworth, 2017). ...
The Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies will publish a themed issue in Fall 2021: Institution Building in the Commons Sector. The guest editors of this issue invite researchers, scholars, activists, and authors to submit original writing for publication in its Fall/Winter 2021 issue (Vol. 8 No. 2). The submission deadline is August 15, 2021.
Empirical studies on energy democracy (ED) tend to presume boundaries among community energy (CE) practices, corporate operations, and state leadership. This research note identifies three features underlying existing literature: an implicit binary thinking of state and society, the understated market influence, and a lack of urban features that enable ED functioning through spatial means. I therefore propose urban commons (UC) as a complementary framework to interrogate the interplay among the state, society, and market operations in CE research and practices. I examine how ED informs CE operations in Japan, Taiwan, and Korea, identifying a set of limitations to which UC can respond. Some latest thinking on UC and a body of strategies proposed by key interlocutors were discussed. I then propose “state-led, market-enabled commons” as a conceptual framework to account for urban civic energy initiatives in East Asia.
The Northland Solar Commons Project is a creative partnership among the University of Minnesota, the solar manufacturing firm Heliene, Inc., and the Bois Forte Ojibwe Reservation. To make sure that the sun’s common wealth is shared with its tribal community neighbors, Heliene will host a 500 kW Solar Commons behind the meter of its manufacturing plant in northern Minnesota. As a Solar Commons host, Heliene accepts a twenty-year obligation to pay forward its solar savings (approximately $70,000 annually) to a community trust whose beneficiary is the Bois Forte Food Sovereignty Group working on reversing the disproportionate health impacts of colonization and commodity food on its tribal members. Together with the Solar Commons Research Project at the University of Minnesota, Heliene and Bois Forte members will be co-creating and piloting the legal and digital peer governance tools that will make community trust solar ownership—Solar Commons™—a robust economic tool for low-income community benefit. In this panel CEO of Heliene and Founder/Director of the Solar Commons Project present their work to test a reparative justice, community economy tool for a more just energy transition.KeywordsCommunity solarSolar ownership innovationJust energy transition
The changing in the meaning of common resources together with the new consciousness regarding their importance show that, also in Europe (and in other economically highly-developed areas), the research on the commons is not only an issue for historians. It represents one of the key issues towards a better understanding for some of the major challenges underlying the politics of EU countries.
The rapid decline of solar panel costs in recent years has ushered in a solar boom that has not spread uniformly across the spectrum of U.S. household incomes. Despite being more vulnerable to energy costs, lower income Americans have lagged behind more affluent households in adopting solar and realizing its numerous benefits.
To better understand and address this inequity, the GW Solar Institute's 2014 Solar Symposium convened policymakers, industry and business leaders, researchers, and students from across the country for the first national discussion to focus on the barriers to lower income solar deployment and potential solutions to overcome them.
The authors first summarize the emerging themes and recommendations from the 2014 Solar Symposium and then elaborate on them further for the benefit of federal, state, and local policymakers considering ways to address lower income solar barriers. The authors specify several policy recommendations to serve as a starting point for addressing the solar income gap.
With electric generation responsible for 41 percent of U.S anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from energy use, development of clean energy sources is essential if the United States is to reduce release of greenhouse gases and slow global warming. Many proponents of sustainable energy anticipate that electric generation from renewable sources would thrive in a deregulated market, driven by consumer demand for “green” energy and the end of incentives to build large central power plants under the cost-plus profits guaranteed by state utility commissions. This paper examines the flaws in this expectation. After reviewing the highly cyclical nature of U.S. energy policy making in recent decades, the study links the ineffectiveness of policy with the institutional setting. Under electric utility market restructuring, renewable energy generation (wind, biomass, solar, geothermal, and small-scale hydro) must overcome barriers such as price distortions, lack of storage capability, discriminatory transmission system access, and the end of linked utility rate hikes guaranteed to cover the additional expense of renewable generation. In the absence of strong federal leadership, the state commitment to renewable energy has been uneven under utility restructuring. Moreover, nuclear power—the other leading alternative to fossil fuel use—is beset by serious problems. Only renewable energy options offer long-term hope for sustainability. Along these lines, green marketing, renewable portfolio standards, system benefit charges, carbon taxes, public power, “Community Choice,” and production credits—all based on recent U.S. and European experience—are critically examined and recommendations made for changing course. At present, during this highly fluid period of utility restructuring, and absent more forceful regulation and demand management, it is dubious whether U.S. electricity market reform can encourage sufficient conversion to renewable energy to stem a rising tide of greenhouse gas emissions.
The commons literature makes much of the changes within the traditional land use sectors of developed countries. This largely focuses on the decline of the economic function of commons that threaten their existence, the emergence of multiple use patterns, and the resilience and policy adaptation needed to continue. The situation in England and Wales is used to illustrate that commons are increasingly important to a number of ‘new’ rural functions and that the associated policy developments may hold an important message for progress towards sustainable multifunctional land management more generally. This article reviews and updates what is meant by the term common land within England and Wales, while outlining its current importance and threats. The commons literature is investigated to see if the approach is useful in revealing the current issues associated with the incorporation of new stakeholders and functions within a traditional structure. Recent changes and developments surrounding the Commons Act 2006 are assessed to see if they are likely to assist in sustaining these commons through the twenty-first century. The article argues that any new approach requires long term planning and a commitment to support local participation among commoners and others who are involved in the governance and management of these areas of land. In order for these challenges to be met there needs to be an understanding of the functions and cultural traditions of common land as well as of the changes in society associated with the decline in traditional agrarian management in developed countries. Such challenges can rarely if ever be achieved through legislation and policy developments, requiring an investment in developing locally based solutions.
The pressing need for a smarter and greener grid is obvious, but how this goal should be achieved is much less clear. This book clearly defines the environmental promise of the smart grid and describes the policies necessary for fully achieving the environmental benefits of the digital energy revolution.
The United States’ electrical grid is an antique. It was built to serve a 20th-century economy and designed in an era when the negative environmental impacts of electricity production were poorly understood. It must be upgraded and modernized. The proposed solution is a “smart grid”—a network of new digital technologies, equipment, and controls that can respond quickly to the public’s changing energy needs by facilitating two-way communication between the utility and consumers. This book explains the environmental benefit of a smart grid, examines case studies of existing smart grids, and identifies the legal and regulatory policy hurdles that must be overcome to fully realize the smart grid’s benefits.
Based on six diverse organizations’ experience as “early adopters” in the digital energy revolution, the authors explore how a smart electric grid offers real promise for supercharging energy efficiency, democratizing demand response, electrifying transportation, preparing for ubiquitous distributed clean energy technologies, and automating the distribution system. Against the backdrop of climate change and continuing economic uncertainty, setting a path for environmental improvement and upgrading our electric grid with new digital technologies and associated smart policies is more critical than ever before.
Citizens' wealth funds (CWFs) can be a key tool in tackling the growing disparity of wealth between the public and private sector and helping improve inter-generational fairness. They can also be a powerful pro-equality force. Such funds would be commercially managed and independently run, but held in trust for the public, with the dividends but not the capital used for social purposes. Some governments (including Singapore, Alaska, Australia and Norway) have successfully built up large funds, using the proceeds of natural resource extraction or privatisation. Getting public buy-in is the key to the success of such funds - and some of the most successful hypothecate the revenues to specific aims, for example a citizen's annual dividend (a kind of basic income) or to pay government pensions.
In A Theory of Full Employment, Y. S. Brenner reviews the current drift toward a society he finds neither economically expedient nor morally attractive, and N. Brenner-Golomb discusses the risks involved for science and society in the newfangled sophism hiding behind post-modern ideas and "political correctness." Both authors emphasize the need to revive the public's political engagement and revise economic theory to restore to society the humane perspective that inspired the welfare state. They contend that if people will abandon outworn habits of thought, consider alternatives, and renew their political engagement, they may find useful employment for all who are able and willing to work and end the fear of destitution. Although scientists' philosophical backgrounds seldom influence their answers, they do determine their questions, and the final outcome can depend on this. Neoclassical economists are ill equipped to ask questions about the long-term dynamic processes of our complex economic reality. They leave out of their models variables not easily quantified and prefer mathematical precision to the study of the intricacy of life. Paul Samuelson, Robert Solow, and others have tried to overcome this by grouping self-adjusting elements into "proxy" variables, thus synthesizing neoclassical and Keynesian ideas. But most of today's critics of the ruling dogma go largely unheard. This volume is intended to convince professional economists who study the economic system as a whole to reexamine some of the assumptions behind reigning economic theories. A second objective is to explain to the general public why currently fashionable policies cannot solve massive long-term unemployment. Finally, it shows that if political engagement is revived, we may escape the economic morass and moral wasteland into which, the fashionable policies have been leading us since the 1970s. This book will appeal to economists, politicians, sociologists, and a wider public concerned about today's economic malaise.
This remarkable book shines a fierce light on the current state of liberty and shows how longstanding restraints against tyranny-and the rights of habeas corpus, trial by jury, and due process of law, and the prohibition of torture-are being abridged. In providing a sweeping history of Magna Carta, the source of these protections since 1215, this powerful book demonstrates how these ancient rights are repeatedly laid aside when the greed of privatization, the lust for power, and the ambition of empire seize a state. Peter Linebaugh draws on primary sources to construct a wholly original history of the Great Charter and its scarcely-known companion, the Charter of the Forest, which was created at the same time to protect the subsistence rights of the poor.
The growing affluence in the first decades of the post-war era provided employers and the middle class with enough financial reserves not to be fearful of the worst, and gave workers the feeling that they were sufficiently protected by Labour Unions, social legislation, and their power at the ballot box not to be inordinately concerned about their future. Before long the “dual mechanism” driving force began to weaken; greed was taking the place of fear and complicity the place of solidarity. But greed is not like fear, it is a different kind of fuel, and when the ownership of means of production becomes divorced from their management it affects the economic mechanisms in another way.
Environmental law has failed us all. As ecosystems collapse across the globe and the climate crisis intensifies, environmental agencies worldwide use their authority to permit the very harm that they are supposed to prevent. Growing numbers of citizens now realize they must act before it is too late. This book exposes what is wrong with environmental law and offers transformational change based on the public trust doctrine. An ancient and enduring principle, the trust doctrine asserts public property rights to crucial resources. Its core logic compels government, as trustee, to protect natural inheritance such as air and water for all humanity. Propelled by populist impulses and democratic imperatives, the public trust surfaces at epic times in history as a manifest human right. But until now it has lacked the precision necessary for citizens, government employees, legislators, and judges to fully safeguard the natural resources we rely on for survival and prosperity. The Nature's Trust approach empowers citizens worldwide to protect their inalienable ecological rights for generations to come.
OPEN ACCESS: https://doi.org/10.1080/17449626.2015.1054556 —
This article challenges E.P. Thompson's definition of 'moral economy' as a traditional consensus of crowd rights that were swept away by market forces. Instead, it suggests that the concept has the potential of improving the understanding of modern civil society. Moral economy was a term invented in the eighteenth century to describe many things. Thompson's approach reflects only a minor part of this conceptual history. His understanding of moral economy is conditioned by a dichotomous view of history and by the acceptance of a model according to which modern economy is not subject to moral concerns. It is on principle problematic to confine a term conjoining two concepts as general as 'moral' and 'economy' to a specific historical and social setting. Recent approaches that frame moral economy as an emotively defined order of morals are also misleading since they do not address economic issues in the way they are commonly understood. The most promising current approaches appear to be those that consider the moral economy of welfare, humanitarianism, and civil society. The concept of moral economy may help us to clarify alternative ways of utility maximisation through the construction of altruistic meaning for economic transactions.
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The vast majority of the world’s scientists agree: we have reached a point in history where we are in grave danger of destroying Earth’s life-sustaining capacity. But our attempts to protect natural ecosystems are increasingly ineffective because our very conception of the problem is limited; we treat “the environment” as its own separate realm, taking for granted prevailing but outmoded conceptions of economics, national sovereignty, and international law. Green governance is a direct response to the mounting calls for a paradigm shift in the way humans relate to the natural environment. It opens the door to a new set of solutions by proposing a compelling new synthesis of environmental protection based on broader notions of economics and human rights and on commons-based governance. Going beyond speculative abstractions, the book proposes a new architecture of environmental law and public policy that is as practical as it is theoretically sound.
This volume is a collection of fourteen, mainly applied, economic papers examining electric utility deregulation in many parts of the world. These papers were presented at the International Workshop on Deregulation of Electric Utilities held in Montreal, Canada in September 1997. As the title suggests, these papers cover a broad range of topics. Despite the book's scattershot approach, a small subset of contributors asks a fundamental question: Is the industry sufficiently deregulated? This book succeeds in providing some concrete and well-analyzed examples that examine this important question.
The governance of natural resources used by many individuals in common is an issue of increasing concern to policy analysts. Both state control and privatization of resources have been advocated, but neither the state nor the market have been uniformly successful in solving common pool resource problems. After critiquing the foundations of policy analysis as applied to natural resources, Elinor Ostrom here provides a unique body of empirical data to explore conditions under which common pool resource problems have been satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily solved. Dr Ostrom uses institutional analysis to explore different ways - both successful and unsuccessful - of governing the commons. In contrast to the proposition of the 'tragedy of the commons' argument, common pool problems sometimes are solved by voluntary organizations rather than by a coercive state. Among the cases considered are communal tenure in meadows and forests, irrigation communities and other water rights, and fisheries.
The shift to competition in utility generation is likely to generate "stranded investments," which are wealth transfers between investors and utility ratepayers. Stranded investments can take either of two forms: (1) "stranded costs" are a transfer from investors to ratepayers that occur when revenues are insufficient to compensate utilities for investments approved and undertaken under the pre-existing regulatory regime; (2) "stranded benefits" are a transfer in the opposite direction, from ratepayers to investors, that occur when (a) utilities are allowed to charge market prices for electricity based on investments previously paid for by ratepayers in the regulatory process and (b) market prices exceed regulated prices. Utilities have successfully lobbied the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and several state legislatures to permit them to recover stranded costs in the process of utility deregulation. But they have been rationally silent about the converse problem of stranded benefits, which benefits them and their investors at the expense of electricity consumers, who have had little voice in deregulation negotiations. If equity requires that utilities and their investors be compensated for stranded costs in deregulation, then equity must also dictate that ratepayers be compensated for stranded benefits. Data and forecasts from several sources provide no basis for believing ex ante that stranded costs are likely to exceed stranded benefits. Consequently, there is no reason - aside from public choice - for states to provide for stranded cost recovery while ignoring stranded benefits. As a normative matter, stranded cost recovery should be allowed only where a utility's stranded costs exceed the sum of stranded benefits and the transaction costs associated with any compensation scheme. Similarly, electricity consumers should be allowed to recovery stranded benefits when those benefits exceed the sum of stranded costs and the transaction costs associated with compensation. Where the difference between expected stranded costs and benefits is small, then the best policy may be to allow no recovery of either. Indeed, given the substantial ex ante uncertainty about who will gain and who will lose from investments stranded by deregulation, the best overall policy, from a transaction-cost perspective, may be to leave stranded costs and benefits where they fall.
“Consumer welfare” is the only articulated goal of antitrust law in the United States. It became the governing standard following the 1978 publication of Robert Bork’s The Antitrust Paradox. The consumer welfare standard has been instrumental to the implementation and enforcement of antitrust laws. Courts believe they understand this standard, although they have failed to effectively analyze it. Scholars hold various views about the desirable interpretations of the standard, and they use judicial statements selectively to substantiate their personal views. This Article introduces the Antitrust Consumer Welfare Paradox: It shows that, under all present interpretations of the term “consumer welfare,” there are several sets of circumstances in which the application of antitrust laws may hurt consumers and reduce total social welfare. The Article shows that Bork’s use of the term “consumer welfare” obscured basic concepts in economics. The Article clarifies that the antitrust methodology permits only surplus analysis and does not accommodate welfare analysis. It explains the conceptual differences between the terms “surplus” and “welfare” and the relevant implications of each. The Article further explains the differences between two other competing standards - “consumer surplus” and “total surplus” - that presently serve as proposed interpretations for the term “consumer welfare.” Each interpretation has its limits and the necessary analytical progress requires conceptual clarity. The Article argues that, whatever good ends the “consumer welfare” phrase once may have served, antitrust law should now lay it to rest.
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Human institutions—ways of organizing activities—affect the resilience of the environment. Locally evolved institutional arrangements
governed by stable communities and buffered from outside forces have sustained resources successfully for centuries, although
they often fail when rapid change occurs. Ideal conditions for governance are increasingly rare. Critical problems, such as
transboundary pollution, tropical deforestation, and climate change, are at larger scales and involve nonlocal influences.
Promising strategies for addressing these problems include dialogue among interested parties, officials, and scientists; complex,
redundant, and layered institutions; a mix of institutional types; and designs that facilitate experimentation, learning,
and change.
ALLETE Energy Corridor Would Offer Efficient Movement of Multiple Products, from Flared Gas to Water to Carbon
- Allete
The Trust as an Instrument of Law Reform
- Scott Austin W.
Breaking Energy Path Dependencies
- Stein Amy L.
Last Gasp of Coal: Plants Running When Cheaper, Cleaner Energy Available
- Lyden Tom
U.S. Solar Market Tops 10 GW in 2018, Again
- Runyon Jennifer
Rooftop Solar DIMS Under Pressure from Utility Lobbyists
- Tabuchi Hiroko
Minnesota Court Rejects 2 Major Permits for Polymet Mine
- Karnowski Steve
Minnesota Court of Appeals Orders Further Review of Proposed Superior Natural Gas Plant
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Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution
- Marjorie Kelly
Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime
- Bruno Latour
Children of the Sun: A History of Humanity's Unappeasable Appetite for Energy
- Alfred W. Crosby
Common Wealth Trusts: Structures of Transition. Great Transition Initiative
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Solar Commons Financial Analysis Results: Solar Commons Project Analysis Phase 1 of 2
- Kevin Brehm
- Genevieve Lillis
Solar Commons Scalability and Constraints Analysis Results: Solar Commons Project Analysis Phase 2 of 2
- Kevin Brehm
- Genevieve Lillis
The Oxford Handbook of the Macroeconomics of Global Warming
- Ottmar Edenhofer
- Christian Flachsland
- Michael Jakob
- Kai Lessmann
As Utilities Flee Newly Scandalous UARG, Remaining Members Make Dishonest Claims About its Purpose
- Matt Kasper