Our mission

Cooperative Community Energy (CCE) provides access to reasonably priced renewable energy solutions for homes and businesses. It will work with its members to provide and use energy solutions that are environmentally and economically sensible. The fees earned from the primary business of reselling renewable energy equipment will be used to engage the public, the energy markets, and the political leaders in the building of safe and lasting renewable energy solutions.

Our vision

• Decentralizing affordable, clean energy
• Influencing public policy
• Sharing our knowledge

Cooperative Community Energy is a lasting resource for the community that provides energy for peaceful co-existence between people and nature.

Over the past few generations, our elected officials and business leaders have developed energy policies built on harmful and poisonous fuels and technologies. Furthermore, they have set up a centralized energy distribution system that concentrates power in the hands of a few utilities and removes any real choice or control from ordinary citizens regarding their energy supply. Recent manipulation of the supply and prices of electricity has demonstrated how vulnerable we are.

Decentralizing clean, affordable energy

Ordinary citizens are now motivated to "take the power back," and the technology now exists for us to purchase and install the means to produce our own electrical power using renewable energy sources such as wind and solar radiation.

Cooperative Community Energy can serve as mechanism to aggregate the buying power of the members of our community to reduce the cost of equipment and exert pressure on the renewable energy market to grow in ways that are responsive to community needs.

Cooperative Community Energy is focusing its efforts to make renewable energy systems familiar and affordable to average consumers so that the choice to install a renewable energy system becomes as simple as--and even preferable to--buying electricity from the centralized power utility.

As more people install their own power systems, they will be able to set up their own energy utilities to buy and sell electricity amongst themselves, negotiating their own prices and policies. Power generation will become more decentralized and the community at large will be in a better position to challenge the hegemony of the centralized power utilities.

Influencing public policy

Our membership can also be mobilized to raise the awareness of citizens and their representative politicians to the need for renewable energy and work for change in the political arena. For example, we could lobby to extend current laws and incentive programs to enable renters and others who do not own property to purchase and participate in the benefits of renewable energy.

Our energy future depends on the success of more than one company or corporation. By nurturing a grassroots cooperative community of consumers, solar designers, energy efficiency consultants, installers, building department officials, and financing institutions, CCEnergy becomes the focal point for growing a sustainable renewable energy market where all of us thrive.

Sharing our knowledge

Cooperative Community Energy is helping to train co-op members to become more knowledgeable and proficient in the skills required to build renewable energy systems, so they can participate in member installation projects. This has the added benefit of building community by encouraging co-op members and neighbors to help each other in their renewable energy system installations and create stronger bonds between neighbors. Once created, those relationships extend to other activities and community projects.

Training is not be limited to co-op members. Cooperative Community Energy plans to sponsor training workshops for local electricians and contractors so that the community at large benefits from a larger pool of qualified persons to install and service their equipment, raising the quality of work while reducing prices.

Cooperative Community Energy has already initiated community training about solar electricity by planning a series of training workshops for building inspectors on the specific needs of solar installations. This goes a long way toward creating goodwill between the co-op and the authorities that have the power to approve or deny these types of projects. The co-op is forging relationships with local government to work together to streamline the building permit and inspection process and to address zoning issues that affect renewable energy installations.

Cooperative Community Energy strives to be a successful and financially independent model of the right way to promote renewable energy in the community and to encourage other communities to initiate similar efforts.