[P2P-F] demand side reduction cooperative

[Michel Bauwens]

 Dear Jeffrey,

a wonder if you could present your concept of demand side reduction coops to
both our blog and wiki audience?

Michel


Jeffrey Sterling <teleboiski at gmail.com> Jul 23 08:36AM -0700
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I completely agree with you Michel!

I would like to take sustainable communities as an example. On the supply
side a community may have a electricity company, a water company, a gas
company, oil companies (gasoline), and waste stream companies (sewer, trash,
recycle, compost). Each company is siloed and views their job as maintaining
and operating a supply chain for an ever growing demand for their service.
Some pay lip service to demand reduction at times but it is a "fox in the
hen house" situation.

Now suppose community members created a demand side reduction cooperative,
that was funded through a performance based contract placed on each of the
supply side companies, that provided demand side reduction services to it's
members.

Examples:

- Catching rainwater in cisterns for graywater and freshwater supply that
eliminated the need for the next groundwater well or dam.

- Superinsulating all homes in a community to reduce the number of new
powerplants or a new gas pipeline.

- Creating a smart microgrid that will provide peaking power negawatts as an
independent power producer and provide solar collectors for peak cooling as
well as battery backup storage and essential power to computers in the home.

- Creating a community wide distributed generation system that provides
essential power to the community in case of disaster plus CHP (combined heat
power) to the local hospital/greenhouse/community pool.

- Creating an on demand local ridesharing and shopping delivering service
using community members and their vehicles to reduce the demand for
cars/roads/gasoline and providing jobs for underemployed people and reducing
the demand for underfunding government services.

- Creating community reuse services that reduce the demand for recycling and
waste removal that reduces the need for landfills.

I could go on and on, but the basic idea is that siloed supply side
companies are not in the business of reducing demand they are in the
business of increasing supply which damages the environment and is not
sustainable. Creating community-run demand side reduction coops (that are
voluntary) will make a community resilient, sustainable and will create work
for community members. Having a community-owned cloud will make the
integration of demand side reduction services into the life of a community
possible. Also establishing performance based contracts where demand
reductions are measured with make it possible for demand side reduction
services to be cash flow positive because demand reduction decreases the
need for supply which keep the money in the community.

Also, trying a demand reduction strategy as a government program is
perceived as big brother control and never works and usually involves some
kind of public/private partnership that siphons money out of the community.

>From somewhere over America,

-Jeff Sterling


On Jul 22, 2011, at 9:24 PM, Michel Bauwens wrote:

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