p2p energy | Re-public: re-imagining democracy

P2P energy production and distribution

While writing the text of the call for papers for the current issue, our primary aim was to invite contributions towards a critical view of the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) energy production and distribution. is there any possibility buy clomid online for low cost However, a call for papers has always been an open challenge — being unsure of what and where you will finally get — and so we came to understand that in fact, before critically examine the aforementioned, a solid, integral theoretical framework has to be articulated.

Hence, the papers and the interviews included in this special issue describe the certain context in which discussions and experiments, about and with these alternative modes of energy production and distribution, are taking place. Moreover, this issue sheds light on the relevant infrastructures; provides assumptions about the future; refers to the Greek case; and deals with the emerging political economy of P2P energy production and distribution.

Michel Bauwens – Setting the broader context for P2P infrastructures: The long waves and the new social contract

With the assistance of Franz Nahrada and Gleb Tyurin

The new economy will be an economy of renewable resources, that’s why access to land and soil will become one of the main sources of abundance again if it will be combined with access to new information technologies and information exchange, argues Michel Bauwens. Countries with heavy exposure to solar input and large reserves of land and biomass will be particularly well placed in this transition.

Walt Patterson – Infrastructure keeps the lights on

Walt Patterson proposes that we refocus so-called ‘energy’ activities to shift the balance, away from supply of fuels and electricity toward upgrading the user-technology and user-infrastructure – especially buildings – that deliver the services we desire. At the moment that viewpoint is not represented strongly by any party anywhere on the political spectrum in democratic society anywhere. If we stop taking traditional electricity for granted, if we begin to examine and question it, we may come to prefer innovative electricity.

Eric Hunting – On the prospects and strategy of peer-to-peer energy

Eric Hunting proposes that a renewable energy infrastructure must integrate a very vast assortment of technologies and employ a new kind of ‘grid’ more akin to a computer network; bi-direction, variable load, with short term energy buffering and long-term seasonal storage. He also urges for the consideration of how power and architecture can become integrated, both in terms of passive energy characteristics of architecture for sake of energy efficiency but also the integration of active power systems within our built habitat.

Hermann Scheer – Towards a new energy revolution

Hermann Scheer talks about designing environmental policies that promote effectively renewable sources of energy and that could possibly overcome the entrenched interests of conventional energy suppliers, about the Copenhagen climate conference and states that renewable energies bring the opportunity of connecting directly the spaces of energy sources to the places of energy consumption and energy production. The logic underlying new energies is decentralisation.

George Papanikolaou – Peer to Peer energy production and the social conflicts in the era of “green development”

Since the direct production process is the one that defines distribution, the single most important innate advantage of P2P production is that it ensures, on a long term and on a stable basis, a fairer and more equal distribution of wealth. In distributed production, argues George Papanikolaou, the largest part of the energy produced is intended for individual consumption, limiting the field of the market to exchanges of energy. A network that allows, without the mandatory intervention of a third party, the reversal of energy flows between peers, delimitates even more the sphere of the market and the official monetary circulation.

Stelios Stavroulakis – The urgency of peer-to-peer communities for a smooth transition to renewables

The viability of the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy resources mostly by the funding aid of the state recently overturned pessimistic predictions and over-anxious concerns regarding costs and self-sufficiency. However transition takes place in conditions of high unemployment and the costly and likely not sustainable macro-installations inherited from the mega-plant infrastructure mentality pose additional challenges.

Vijay Vaitheeswaran – Micropower and the coming energy revolution

Vijay Vaitheeswaran discusses the shift from an oil-based energy industry towards “smart micropower”, a new paradigm involving a smart grid that integrates both decentralized and centralized power plants in a robust fashion. He explains that the coming decentralization of the energy will inexorably lead to a democratization of infrastuctures, away from monopolistic controls.

page 1 2 ►

→ Special Issues

Dialogues ←

→ Projects

Tags