According to a study published in January, only 29 citizen energy cooperatives were founded in Germany last year. The German Citizen Energy Alliance says the low number is a sign that the energy sector is being handed back to big business. Craig Morris investigates. First, let’s begin with a definition of cooperatives as the Germans understand them. As an American, I know that the term is understood differently elsewhere. In the US, cooperatives are a kind of utility, and they are not necessarily friendly towards renewables. Rather, they represent a kind of rural “municipal” utility, meaning that they are owned at least in part by the communities they serve, but these communities are often small towns. Such cooperatives often played a crucial role in bringing electricity to rural areas in the first half of the 20th century. They largely did so, however, with conventional energy, and some cooperatives have also bought into nuclear power. As a result, cooperatives in the US are sometimes openly hostile to renewables, which are viewed as a threat to stranded … Continue reading Few new German energy co-ops in 2014