Energy Cooperatives and Municipalities in Local Energy Governance Arrangements in Switzerland and Germany

Abstract

Participation of citizens in local energy decisions is increasingly recognized as helpful for a successful decentralized energy transition. In this article, we focus on energy cooperatives in which private individuals jointly develop facilities to generate energy from renewable sources, thus involving citizens both politically and economically. Focusing on Switzerland and Germany, we show that there is a strong linkage between such cooperatives and municipalities, characterized by collaboration and support, and that the cooperatives are well suited as collaborating partners. We also show that federalist structures are most suited for such local arrangements as municipalities must have leeway to support cooperatives in a targeted manner and to compensate for shortcomings in the energy policy of superordinate governmental levels. Based on these results, we suggest that local governments should be given sufficient financial capacities and autonomy to strengthen implementation of a decentralized energy transition that involves citizens. However, we also recognize that municipal structures alone are often insufficient and that superordinate policies, especially national subsidies, remain essential. Hence, policies at the municipal and national levels should take greater account of citizen initiatives, such as energy cooperatives, which exhibit various noncommodifiable advantages relevant to the energy transition.

How municipalities support energy cooperatives: survey results from Germany and Switzerland

“…Such an interest could be the cooperatives' engagement in municipal energy policies. Indeed, many energy cooperatives are politically active [81]. Taken together, our results support the notion that politics relating to cooperatives is a multi-level governance issue and the politics of each level impact on the system [27].…”

“…Of that time, in Switzerland more than 100 cooperatives are still active as distribution grid operators [11]. However, most energy cooperatives have been forced out of the market by public, private, and privatized utilities [11,14,80,81], a process that was even stronger in Germany. Only recently have energy cooperatives experienced a renaissance in both countries.…”

“…Somewhat unexpected is the strong engagement of German municipalities in purchasing energy at cost-covering prices, since selling the produced electricity was not often considered a limiting factor by the German cooperatives. An explanation could be that municipalities purchase at cost-covering prices to foster the development of renewable energies by local actors and to reduce (their) CO 2 emissions in order to fulfill energy policy and climate protection goals [81]. Because of the reduced national FITs, municipal electricity purchase at cost-covering prices is likely to become economically vital to electricity-producing cooperatives, as it is already the case in Switzerland.…”

“…Another potential limitation is that our survey results of municipal support are based solely on information provided by the cooperatives and not by the municipalities. However, we conducted qualitative interviews with municipal actors which were not included in this paper but corroborate the information about municipal support provided by the cooperatives [81].…”

“…Foundations of energy cooperatives per 100,000 inhabitants and year (adapted from Schmid et al[81])Meister et al Energy, Sustainability and Society (2020) 10:18…”