Citizen-owned green power in Germany
In the US, the growth of renewables remains largely dependent on the involvement of utilities, with average Americans not able to become power producers. Not so in Germany, whose Big Four utilities make up less than 7% of green power generation.
Germany's Renewable Energy Agency has produced a pie chart showing ownership of green power generators, and the findings are noteworthy. It turns out that “private persons” (meaning individuals investing in solar roofs or purchasing shares of local solar, wind and biomass projects) own 40% of green power generators in Germany. The second biggest group is “project developers” – who collect funds from communities – at 14 percent, followed closely by “farmers” at 11 percent and “businesses” (stores and offices) at 9 percent.
Collectively, these groups make up some 75 percent of installed capacity, leaving only 25 percent for major players: the Big Four utilities (RWE, Eon, EnBW, and Vattenfall) at a mere 6.5 percent together, 11 percent for “funds / banks” and 7 percent for “other power providers”, a category that includes municipals – which, in turn, serve their customer base with community ownership and could therefore also be included in the category of distributed power.
Given Germany’s leadership in renewables, it seems clear that large utilities are not needed for the success of green power. Nonetheless, US policy remains focused on encouraging utilities to switch to green power, with the result that giant projects are developed, and citizens see such projects as impinging on their rights and landscapes. If they could see these projects as their own (because they own shares, etc.), opposition might be lower, and projects would include more public input from the outset.
In addition, financers and market analysts might start counting small distributed systems. As Renewables International recently reported, estimates of Germany’s success have been wildly underestimated because financers focus exclusively on utility-scale investments, which are truly marginal in Germany’s distributed success story. (Craig Morris)
