Renewable Energy Cooperatives

Cooperatives, most generally put, are associations of independent individuals pursuing a common goal. This goal can be economic in nature, but does not have to be. Its origins lie in workers' cooperatives, but today there exist also housing and consumer cooperatives, cooperative banks, retail cooperatives, and others. For renewable energy projects in communities of various sizes, the cooperative model offers some intuitively fitting advantages.
Cooperatives are based on seven principles as laid out by the International Co-operative Alliance in their Statement on the Co-operative identity. These are: 1) voluntary membership, 2) democratic member control, 3) member economic participation, 4) autonomy and independence, 5) education, training and information, 6) Co-operation among co-operatives, and 7) concern for community. In the context of renewable energies, the democratic control through the members and the economical participation and gain of all the members is especially interesting.
Unlike in a public company, where votes are based on the number of shares owned, in a cooperative the number of votes does not grow with the contribution to cooperative capital. Each member has the same decision power regardless of how much money they put into the enterprise: one vote. This is what makes cooperatives very democratic and a method to keep power from concentrating according to economic weight.
Economic return, on the other hand, is based on the size of the initial investment. But unlike regular investments, this investment generally goes into a project that is of direct use to the investor, too. In the case of renewable energy, this means being a consumer of the produced energy as well as an investor in the installations and someone who will have economic gain from eventual profitability.

Cooperatives have been tried successfully as a business model for relatively large-scale renewable energy projects. The Energiegenossenschaft Odenwald eG in Germany is one of several, and in its scale it is not merely a neighbourhood project. Some suppliers of renewable energy installations are organised cooperatively too. Renewable energy installations in densely populated areas are rarely small projects, and sometimes the required investment can exceed what private persons are able to fund even if they pool their resources; in cases like these, cooperatives can take on bank loans like other sorts of businesses.
In small communities in unelectrified areas, available funds for renewable energy projects might be scarce even if the installation in question is not terribly large. But even with outside funding added in the mix, the business model of a cooperative offers the chance for everyone who wants to get involved to do so. Beyond financial resources, a common endeavour that is able to draw on the skills and experiences of people who are both investors and end users has further resources at its disposal which solely commercial or outside-owned projects would not. Where the local community has the resources and the social fabric to organise its renewable energy project in such a way, the cooperative model would be a worthwhile option.