Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1215405
27.02.2020 14 ENERGY THE case for ambitious and transform- ative environmental policy is being made with increasing fervour and a se- ries of "Green New Deals" – a reference to Roosevelt's economic reform pro- gramme in the 1930s – have been pro- posed over the past 12 months in the US, Europe, and the UK. Such policies would involve massive state investment in the development of renewable energy infrastructure, retrofitting buildings to improve energy efficiency, and efficient and high-speed public transport. Reflecting the understanding that cli- mate change demands deep systemic changes to the economy, the US ver- sion includes the introduction of a jobs guarantee: a public-sector job would be available to any US citizen that wants one. And in Europe, proposals call for pub- lic investment banks to invest 5% of GDP each year to "radically reduce Eu- rope's carbon emissions, constructing resilient and zero-emissions infrastruc- ture". Serious commitments to decarbon- ise infrastructure at scale are no doubt essential. But climate justice theorists have long argued that technical fixes will be insufficient without a parallel transition to a global economy that does not rely on constant growth. Addressing the climate emergency demands huge amounts of investment, but it also requires drastic changes to the forms of ownership and governance that underpin the contemporary cap- italist economy. We need to move to- wards models of economic democracy, where everything from investment de- cisions to wages are decided democrati- cally by workers and citizens. Confronting an abstract concept such as the "global economy" can seem like a daunting challenge. But shifting our perspective to the level of our towns and cities, innovative models of eco- nomic democracy are already empow- ering people to deliver real solutions to the climate emergency. With 100% of its electricity coming from renewable sources (and more to spare), the German town of Wolfhagen is particularly demonstrative of what can be achieved when municipalities adopt innovative approaches to the ownership and governance of key in- frastructure. Significant lessons can be drawn from Wolfhagen's hybrid model of ownership, which can – and must – be applied to sectors beyond energy production. Energy democracy Triggered by the Fukushima disaster – and coupled with long-established so- cial movements against fossil fuels – in 2011 the centre-right German govern- ment announced it was pursuing a na- tional policy of Energiewende: energy transition. Yet in Wolfhagen, a town in central Germany with a population of around 14,000, this transition was al- ready well underway. Back in 2005, the local authority de- cided to take back the power. In what became the first steps to fulfilling Wolf- hagen's plan to become fully self-suf- ficient on renewable energy, the city government decided not to renew the private company E.ON's licensing agreement, instead putting a public company – Stadtwerke Wolfhagen – in charge. Followed a 2008 decision that all household electricity would be pro- vided from local renewable resources by 2015, the town committedto build- ing a solar power park and a wind farm. Transitioning to renewable energy can be motivated on a local, as well as na- tional, level. Driven partly by lack of financial re- sources, and partly by a vision of a co-produced and co-owned energy system, Wolfhagen decided to pursue an innovative form of "cooperative par- ticipation" that would put energy into the joint ownership of the municipality and a new citizen-led cooperative - BEG Wolfhagen. Speaking in 2011, the director of the public company Martin Rühl explained: "rough the cooperative participation we want to make the citizens not only co-owners and co-earners, but through the form of a direct participation in the Stadtwerke also co-decision-makers. For future projects, citizens and elec- tricity customers will be at the table from the very beginning." Formed in 2012 by citizens who had been campaigning in favour of the wind farm development, the cooperative now owns 25% of the energy company. With more than 800 members and wealth of more than €3.9 million, the cooperative does more than just let citizens own a share in the towns energy company – it also lets them control it. e cooperative has two of the nine seats on the board of the energy com- pany, providing citizens with voting rights on all issues concerning electric- ity production and supply in the region, ranging from the setting of energy pric- es through to reinvestment in new ca- pacity. e cooperative itself also has an ener- gy-saving fund, which receives its funds directly from the profitable energy com- pany. Governed by an Energy Advisory Board - comprised of nine cooperative members alongside one each from the local energy agency, the Stadtwerk, and the municipality - the fund is designed to support strategies and initiatives aimed at increasing energy efficiency among its members. In practice, this means citizen-led solutions to decarbonisation have now been provided with a regular and dem- ocratically controlled source of funding. This small German town took back the power – and went fully renewable Wolfhagen at Christmas