Working Paper
Extern? : Weshalb und inwiefern moderne Gesellschaften Externalisierung brauchen und erzeugen
(2014)
Qualifizierungsmodul RessourcenKultur : Materialien zur Kompetenzentwicklung für Praktiker/-innen
(2014)
This paper reflects the socio-economic power of renewable energy production cooperatives for a wider energy system transformation in Germany. Energy cooperatives have turned into important supporters of renewable and decentralised energy structures, due to their strong growth since the year 2006, their participation in local renewable energy projects and their democratic awareness. The cooperative form of coordinating local renewable energy projects applies to a decentralised energy system that is managed by many smaller firms - a system concept that is preferred by the majority of German citizens. However, there is not enough knowledge to understand to what extent this organisational form is able to unify a broad group of actors in promoting a renewable energy system (societal power) and to gather capital for elaborating renewable energy supply structures (economic power).
The reflection is based on an empirical assessment of all energy cooperatives that were registered in Germany before 31st December 2013. Their growth dynamic and their business approaches are discussed. A special focus lies on renewable energy production cooperatives. The study presents the development of their members, their capital, their profit and loss, as well as their investment intensity over a timeframe of three years (2010-2012). The socio-economic potential of renewable energy production cooperatives for supporting a renewable energy system is discussed against the background of empirical results.
This policy brief discusses the opportunities and obligations of host country DNAs within the Standardized Baselines framework and identifies options for strategic intervention. Host countries can, for example, intervene by selecting the right sectors for which they develop an SB in the first place. DNAs can also tailor their SBs to some extent to support certain technologies, fuels or feed- stocks over others by choosing the right level of aggregation of the sector to be covered. Last but not least, the paper discusses the DNAs' role in managing the data for the development and maintenance of the SB. Host countries should take full advantage of potential synergies between data collection for SBs and other data intensive processes such as national greenhouse gas inventories or national statistics. SBs and the data gathered in the process of developing them can also be a basis for the development of other mitigation instruments such as Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) or New Market Mechanisms (NMM).