The Community Power Movement:
The Path to 100% Renewable Energy

We know how to solve the global warming crisis, and we know how to make our energy 100% renewable and sustainable. We have all the technology and all the renewable resources we need – that part is easy. It's the political and economic side that poses the real challenge.

Renewable resources are abundant. Compared to the worldwide energy use of 124 pWhr (petawatt-hour or a quadrillion watts per hour) the sun beams down 1,520,000 pWhr, we have available harvestable sustainable biomass of 1520 pWhr, wind power of 30,840 pWhr, hydro power of 46 pWhr, wave and ocean energy of 7,620 pWhr – all the clean energy we need, even for those 40% or more people on earth that don't have electricity. With energy storage, controls and smart management, creatively integrating these renewable energy resources would easily provide 100% of our energy needs.

In the Western world, the source of most of the global warming problem, we find many regions that have demonstrated rapid implementation of renewable energy. This success was not due to solving technical problems but to solving political economic ones. It was due to good public policy. A northern German state, Schleswig Holstein, with roughly half the population of Michigan, transferred 25 percent of its electrical infrastructure to wind power over just a five year period. In a northwest region of Denmark (near the Folkecenter for Renewable Energy in Thy), a county similar in size to a northwestern Michigan county, they provide 130% of their electrical needs from wind power (exporting clean energy and importing money) and 85% of heat from sustainable biomass. Swedish car buyers, in a country with a population similar to Michigan, purchase 85% of their vehicles with bio-fuel engines. While Swedish Saab Motors, now a General Motors subsidiary, is prospering with bio-fuel vehicles, GM in Michigan is busy marketing Hummers and laying off Michigan workers.

These folks demonstrate that the technology and the resources are there, in climates and conditions similar to Michigan's. A typical Michigan residential and commercial neighborhood has enough solar resources to make all of its electricity and all of its heat on a net annual basis using only ten percent of the available land and roofs. For the purposes of a study in our region, I have recently calculated that a residential and commercial area on the west side of Traverse City, covering 1.5 sq. miles (3.9 sq. km), using 10% of the area, either on land or roofs, using 10% efficient solar photovoltaic panels, will make 100% of the net annual electric consumption of the district. During the short winter days, we can integrate the other renewable resources – such as biomass, wind, conservation, efficiency, and brain power – with creative energy storage options to easily exceed 100% of our energy requirements, even for transportation.

Our federal and state government leaders are hopelessly limited by the few large political and economic interests driving the centralized and monopolized global energy ship. They have been bought, and in turn have sold us, a boatload of economic fantasies in the guise of coal, nuclear power, and LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) tankers. In reality, there is no clean coal and there is no way to abate the carbon dioxide in its conversion process. There is no cheap, clean, or safe nuclear power. I calculate that the money spent on the first five years decommissioning the Big Rock Nuclear Power Plant near Charlevoix could have built enough wind power to make more energy than the nuclear power plant made in its lifetime – and windmills can be recycled and land restored after their lifetime. Nuclear sales agents have even convinced many otherwise intelligent "environmentalists" that we need nuclear power.

The only viable political and economic solution is community power. Community power means harvesting and implementing renewable energy resources on a local scale. Locally owned, not too big, not too small, but the right size to be very economical, very environmental, very politically acceptable, and very possible. Of course, there is need and room for all of us to work both on individual solutions and personal change, but we must pool our community resources and community will to work together. The will and the resources are there and, with a little encouraging, we can open the floodgate of human and renewable resources.

If, as we know, solar hot water works on a home (like mine), it can work even better on a community scale. If wind power can work for 150 homes (like in Traverse City), it can just as easily work for 2,000 or 200,000. If biomass can heat a home, it can work even better, more efficiently, and much cleaner on a community district heat scale. If solar photovoltaic electric panels can work on a home (like at my house), they can also work on a community scale.

Community power means acceptance and operation of individually-owned, cooperatively-owned, or public-owned systems. It means "micro-grid regulation" of our electric systems to accept and integrate local and dispersed energy supplies, whether coming from a homeowner, a local business, or a school. Community power means community administration within our existing local government infrastructure – administrators and public workers that keep the water and the electricity flowing. Community power means promulgation of new local energy codes, the development of public thermal renewable energy markets with district heat systems, public financing, municipal bonds and micro-loans. Community power means advanced renewable energy feed-in tariffs and regulations so all renewable energy systems are given a priority, a fair price in order to create a market, and incentives to own and interconnect to the community.

Dr. Hermann Scheer, in his groundbreaking book The Solar Economy, lays an economic, political, and philosophical foundation for the road forward, with clarity telling us: "The first half of the 21st century will decide the fate of human civilization… it will be the next two generations who will have to make the process of eco-industrialization happen. The dangers are too great to risk further procrastination. It is high time the world drew back from the precipice to which fossil fuels have brought it."

Our federal government and leaders have abandoned us to the whims of the economic power brokers, using Russia and China as their political economic development models. We can accept this abandonment, we can be angry and grieve over this abandonment, but we should not waste our precious time on those blinded by greed. Let's get on with solving our problems on a community level. Community Power!

Steve Smiley is an energy economist who has worked on renewable energy and energy efficiency issues for 25 years. He lives near Peshawbestown with his wife Susan K. in a home and office powered and heated with renewable energy.

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