What is Community Empowerment?
A state enabling policy that:
Empowers local communities, through a democratic process, to determine their energy futures
Helps communities finance (“support”) projects that meet the criteria of local values and concerns
Through community empowerment:
Communities support projects of the community’s choice
Meaningful, direct support = Enabling financing
Residents represent the credit-worthy buyer that projects need to secure the financing necessary for development
Long-term energy cost stabilization opportunities
Communities have the ability to purchase above renewable portfolio standards (RPS) for community’s residents, businesses and municipal buildings
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about this website
This website was developed and is maintained by the non-profit Vineyard Power Cooperative, which is dedicated to bringing more renewable energy to the island of Martha's Vineyard, offshore Massachusetts.
We established this website in our role as one of the leading organizations in the coalition to bring Community Empowerment to Massachusetts. However, we soon realized that Community Empowerment is a powerful policy tool that could be used to quickly bring about greater renewable energy use in many places, if not most places across the United States.
For this reason, we structured this website to be available as a platform for Community Empowerment organizers and advocates from across the United States.
If you or your organization would like to promote Community Empowerment in your state, please contact us.
Community Empowerment is a grass-roots initiative designed to support renewable energy projects. To date, it has been carefully crafted with input from State and National environmental and renewable energy groups, renewable energy project developers, municipal aggregators, attorneys with expertise in energy law policies and project finance, State officials and elected officials, residential consumer advocates and utility companies.