Challenging the transition of civilization: Theory and practice of "Energy Democracy"

Abstract

Today, wind powers and solar powers have become the main stream of energies. Everyone, from major electric power utilities to mega capital investors, has entered the renewable energy sector, increasingly and rapidly expanding the mass capital investment projects in the world. It is not rare to find cases of such mega projects developing confrontations with local communities. Since 1990s, the privatization of energy sector has been significant, with Nordic countries and Germany seeing the advancement of privatizations among community-operated energy utilities. Recently, however, there has been the movement to re-review such trend "to revive public utilities". The recent reversal of privatization trend means that the conventional way of decision-making participated by local governments and handful corporations is no longer appropriate, and there is a rise of common understanding that the decision-making and governance method of local communities must be open and distributed horizontally. The rapid progress of ICT in recent years has raised awareness of risks in the governance system dominated by private companies, while raising technical capabilities to realize new and open decision-making and governance in local communities.