Permanent Community Energy Cooperative

Description

Subin Varghese:

"Our team has spent two years mapping the legal landscape of community-owned energy, and we have not found a community-owned energy model in the U.S. that appears to be scalable. Existing successful projects provide much to learn from, but also benefit from unique regulatory environments, financing opportunities, the wealth of higher income communities, or institutional support that may not be available to most communities. Further, we've uncovered legal barriers in the realms of securities, tax, and utilities regulation. Combined, those barriers prevent ordinary people from 1) putting money into, 2) receiving tax benefits from, and 3) directly purchasing energy from their own renewable energy projects. From this exploration, we hatched an idea: the Permanent Community Energy Cooperative.

The model's key innovation is to leverage existing, but little-known, collective finance mechanisms for cooperative entities. Initially, PCECs will be more like energy investment cooperatives than consumer cooperatives. Until laws change, members may not be able to receive energy directly from the cooperative, so the PCEC will have a built-in and legally enforceable adaptation mechanism to enable members to receive energy when regulations make it viable. Meanwhile, as described below, a PCEC can drive energy development by meeting other essential needs for members: 1) money, 2) community, 3) good jobs, and 4) a just, sustainable, and secure future." (http://www.theselc.org/building_just_transition_with_a_pcec?)