Repowering Communities Small-Scale Solutions for Large-Scale Energy Problems

Energy policy is at a crossroads. Attempts to meet targets for carbon emissions, energy security and affordable energy for vulnerable households are all on a trajectory to failure. Aggressive ambitions to roll out huge off-shore wind, nuclear and clean coal plants are proposed, but without any clear plans on how funds will be mobilized, or transmission and distribution infrastructure developed. In this book Prashant Vaze and Stephen Tindale ask politicians and regulators to consider a different path. Using abundant examples of small scale local solutions Repowering Communities examines how cities, communities and local authorities from across Europe and North America have driven reductions in energy use and rolled out small scale, community level solutions. Among the issues examined are the drivers behind behavioural change, the methods used to secure necessary investment and what government and civil society can do to foster such action on a wide scale. Based on extensive first-hand research and drawing on the latest global energy data the authors provide essential information and inspiration for readers who wish to drive the policies that encourage community-level energy development.

1. Introduction 2. The Need for Transformation 3. Why Existing Energy Companies aren't Delivering– Can a Shark go Vegan? 4. Why Governments aren't Delivering 5. Delivering Low Carbon Communities 6. Financing Community Energy Initiatives 7. Increasing the Price of Energy and Helping Renewables without Punishing the Poor 8. Nudging and Shoving People and Business into Changing their Behaviour 9. Bringing this Together–A New Ecology of Energy Markets

Prashant Vaze is the Chief Economist at Consumer Focus, UK. Previously he spent 15 years in the UK's Office of Climate Change, the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit and the Department of the Environment. He is author of The Economical Environmentalist (Earthscan, 2009). Stephen Tindale is Associate Fellow at the Centre for European Reform and co-founder of the Climate Answers website (www.climateanswers.info). He has worked on climate change for the last two decades, for NGOs, think tanks, government and an energy company.