Energy
democracy
Who owns the energy? · Citizenship · Commons
A system can be local without being democratic. It can be democratic without being just. Three frameworks help you tell the difference, and help you design who owns, who decides and who benefits.
Three concepts ↓Ownership models ↓Your governance proposition ↓Strategy and governance
Evaluation
Same panels, different owners
Imagine a municipality replaces a fossil-fuelled energy system with solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and a local heat network. The system is now renewable and decentralised. But who owns it? Who decides where the turbines go? Who receives the revenue, who carries the financial risk, and who can afford the energy it produces? Watch the same neighbourhood under four owners.
Figure 1. Same panels, different owners.
The point. Decentralisation is a technical and spatial feature, not a democratic achievement. A neighbourhood energy system may still be controlled by an investor, exclude tenants, shift costs to low-income households, or depend on extractive supply chains elsewhere.
Democracy, citizenship, commons
The three frameworks overlap but are not synonyms. Each asks a different question about power in an energy system. A review of the field found that energy citizenship research tends to focus on individuals and behaviour change, while energy democracy research focuses on collective actors and new forms of participatory governance (Wahlund & Palm, 2022).
Figure 2. Three overlapping concepts, one shared question.
Energy democracy
How can collective control over energy systems be strengthened? It goes beyond consultation to ask who owns the infrastructure, who controls investment, who makes binding decisions and to whom energy institutions are accountable.
Energy citizenship
What roles can people play, and what roles are they expected to play: voter, consumer, producer, cooperative member, tenant, worker, activist? It links rights with responsibilities. It becomes too individualistic when the transition is reduced to buying solar panels or being a well-behaved “prosumer”. Many people own no roof, do not control their heating and lack the money and time to take part.
Energy commons
How can energy resources and infrastructures be governed collectively? A commons is not just a resource several people use, and not every community energy project is a commons. It combines a resource, a community and rules for access, use, responsibility, monitoring and conflict (Bauwens et al., 2024).
Which concept is it?
Read each situation, decide, then open the card.
Residents of a city vote in a referendum to bring the electricity grid back into public ownership.Think first, then open +
Collective, binding control over who owns and runs the infrastructure.
A tenant asks whether she has the right to share in the solar panels on her landlord’s roof.Think first, then open +
It is about her rights, responsibilities and agency as a person in the energy system.
A village sets its own rules for who may draw heat from a shared well, how much, and how disputes are settled.Think first, then open +
A shared resource, a community and rules for access, use, monitoring and conflict.
A city runs a campaign asking households to install smart meters and shift their washing to sunny afternoons.Think first, then open +
It treats people as individual consumers whose behaviour should change. Useful, but it can load responsibility onto households.
A developer holds three consultation evenings, then builds the wind farm as planned.Think first, then open +
Residents were heard but had no binding say, no ownership and no way to hold the developer to account.
How much power do people really have?
These frameworks distinguish being consulted from having substantive control. Arnstein’s (1969) ladder of citizen participation made the same point for urban planning: much of what is called participation leaves power where it was. The version below adapts her idea to energy.
Figure 3. From consultation to control. Adapted from Arnstein (1969).
Local, democratic, just
Democracy concerns how collective decisions are made. Justice also asks what those decisions do, to whom, and across which territories and generations. A locally supported project can still harm another community or ecosystem. One critical review argues that energy democracy, as usually framed, is too narrow to deliver justice: it focuses on local communities and overlooks extraction and Indigenous communities (Droubi et al., 2022).
Figure 4. Three different tests whose openings do not line up. Not every decentralised project is democratic, and not every democratic project is just.
A commons can still exclude
Bauwens et al. (2024) reviewed 85 studies and distinguish material, institutional and cultural dimensions of energy commons. They identify five paradoxes that any commons-based proposal has to face.
Inclusive, yet exclusive
A commons includes its members and can exclude everyone else.
Western focus
Most research comes from Western contexts, while energy is governed in many other ways around the world.
Local, yet coordinated
Decentralised governance still needs coordination at higher scales: grids, markets and regulation.
Only part of the chain
Research looks at generation and distribution, less at mining, land, waste and decommissioning.
Alternative, yet absorbed
Commons offer an alternative to markets but can be absorbed by them. A solar cooperative does not leave capitalism merely because its members hold meetings.
Five ways to own an energy system
Ownership decides who gets the revenue, who carries the risk and who can change the rules. None of these models is automatically democratic or just. Each needs to be designed. The table is an overview to start your thinking, not a ranking.
| Model | Who owns | Who decides | Where the revenue goes | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cooperative | members who buy shares | members, often one member one vote | members, sometimes a local fund | people without savings, tenants and newcomers may be excluded |
| Municipal | the municipality or a municipal company | elected council; accountability through elections | public budget, tariffs, reinvestment | distance from residents; financial risk for the public budget |
| Public–community partnership | shared between a public body and a cooperative or community | a joint board with agreed rights | split by agreement | unequal power between partners; complex contracts |
| Common-property institution | a defined group of users holding the resource in common | users, by rules they make, monitor and change | to the commons, by its own rules | who counts as a member; coordination with grids and regulation |
| Regulated private provision | a private company | the company, within rules set by a regulator | shareholders, within regulated limits | profit drains out; democracy limited to regulation and licensing |
Three real examples
Hamburg, Germany
On 22 September 2013, 50.9% of voters in a referendum backed bringing Hamburg’s energy networks back into public ownership. The city then took over the electricity grid, the gas grid in 2018 and the district heating network in 2019 (BUND Hamburg, n.d.).
Middelgrunden, Copenhagen
An offshore wind farm of 20 turbines (40 MW) completed around 2000, owned half by a cooperative of about 10,000 members and half by the municipal utility (Middelgrunden wind farm, n.d.). A public–community model.
Netherlands
The 2019 Dutch Climate Agreement sets the aim that, by 2030, 50% of onshore wind and solar generation is owned by the local community: residents and local businesses. It is an aim, not a binding rule (HIER, n.d.).
Design the governance too
When energy is central to your regional strategy, design an ownership and governance proposition alongside your spatial proposal. A map of solar fields and heat networks is only half a strategy. Answer seven questions.
What is governed?
Generation, networks, storage, data, land, raw materials, waste, or a combination?
Who owns and finances it?
A cooperative, municipality, public–community partnership, common-property institution or regulated private provider?
Who decides?
Which groups have voting rights, representation, agenda-setting power or vetoes?
Who benefits and who carries risk?
How are revenues, savings, costs, liabilities and spatial burdens distributed?
Who can gain access?
Can tenants, low-income households, migrants and people without capital take part and benefit?
How is accountability organised?
Who monitors performance, resolves conflicts and can change the rules?
What lies beyond the locality?
Which workers, territories, ecosystems and supply chains make the local system possible?
Suggestion: a table of propositions and their consequences
One possible way to organise your answers. Adapt it, extend it or use another format that suits your project.
| Question | Our proposition | Why (theory and evidence) | Spatial consequence |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. What is governed? | [your answer] | [sources, data, interviews] | [where on the map?] |
| 2. Who owns and finances it? | [your answer] | [sources, data, interviews] | [where on the map?] |
| 3. Who decides? | [your answer] | [sources, data, interviews] | [where on the map?] |
| 4. Who benefits and who carries risk? | [your answer] | [sources, data, interviews] | [where on the map?] |
| 5. Who can gain access? | [your answer] | [sources, data, interviews] | [where on the map?] |
| 6. How is accountability organised? | [your answer] | [sources, data, interviews] | [where on the map?] |
| 7. What lies beyond the locality? | [your answer] | [sources, data, interviews] | [where on the map?] |
The hard question. Not simply whether your strategy gives communities a voice, but whether people have the rights, resources and institutional capacity to shape the energy system, and whether using that power produces a transition that is also just.
The texts behind this page
Arnstein, S. R. (1969). A ladder of citizen participation. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 35(4), 216–224. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944366908977225
Bauwens, T., Wade, R., & Burke, M. (2024). The energy commons: A systematic review, paradoxes, and ways forward. Energy Research & Social Science, 118, 103776. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2024.103776
BUND Hamburg. (n.d.). Volksentscheid Energienetze. https://www.bund-hamburg.de/themen/umweltpolitik/energie/volksentscheid-energienetze/ Accessed on: 10 October 2026.
Droubi, S., Heffron, R. J., & McCauley, D. (2022). A critical review of energy democracy: A failure to deliver justice? Energy Research & Social Science, 86, 102444. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2021.102444
HIER. (n.d.). Klimaatakkoord: Participatie en 50% eigendom van de lokale omgeving. https://www.hier.nu/regionale-energiestrategie/klimaatakkoord-participatie-en-50-eigendom-van-lokale-omgeving Accessed on: 10 October 2026.
Middelgrunden wind farm. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middelgrunden_wind_farm Accessed on: 10 October 2026.
Wahlund, M., & Palm, J. (2022). The role of energy democracy and energy citizenship for participatory energy transitions: A comprehensive review. Energy Research & Social Science, 87, 102482. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2021.102482