ABSTRACT
Efforts to advance renewable energy transitions have largely failed to offer any serious challenge to established systems of property and commodification of energy sources, thus extending patterns of exclusion through transition. The energy commons offers an alternative approach by recognizing replenishable energy sources and associated technologies as commons rather than as commodities and capital assets. This chapter examines how decommodifying energy, specifically in the form of electricity converted using solar and wind technologies, and instituting energy systems as energy commons can contribute to a postcapitalist energy democracy by reinterpreting sunlight and wind as shared sources of energy for all living beings, existing prior to and beyond systems of private property. The work reviews and examines existing and emerging institutions of energy commons, including integrated community energy systems, sustainable energy utilities, cooperative grid management, and other institutional reforms and practices beyond market and state, while accounting for the significant theoretical and practical barriers within and exogenous to these institutions. Drawing from the work of Ostrom and others, the chapter summarizes a set of design principles for energy commoning informed by an energy democracy perspective.
