The participants of the 4th International Community Wind Symposium & Community Power Forum, have gathered in Bonn on 28 & 29 May under the theme “Shaping the Energy Transition – Strength through Alliances”.
Building on the predecessor events and in particular on the Fukushima Community Power Declaration, the Community Power for All! resolution and the Bamako Community Power Declaration, the urgency for a rapid switch to a renewable energy future, based on a fair and equal distribution of wealth and prosperity was underlined.
The urging pressure to act on climate change and to counter the growing disparity amongst people around the world is reaching a fever pitch. And in Bonn, they concluded that 100% renewable energy supply and community power are the primary answers to these two challenges.
At the same time, the growing concern that there are increasing barriers against the rapid growth of renewable energy globally was addressed. The introduction of auctions in the renewable power sector represents an insurmountable hurdle, together with additional barriers in form of restrictive permission rules and manifold other forms of discrimination and exclusion from fair market access.
Nevertheless, the encouraging growth of the renewable energy and community power movement around the world was applauded, the growing community power movement has become a topic on national and international agenda and this was thoroughly welcomed.
The forum called on decision makers on all levels of society:
- to prioritise renewable energy and community power as cornerstones of a sustainable world
- to recognise the utilisation of renewable energy in all its forms, including for self-consumption, as a basic human right
- accordingly, to remove all barriers against the utilisation of renewable energy and against community ownership models, in particular counterproductive policies such as auctions
- to enable communities around the world to play an active role and to work together
- to amend basic legislation and include the basic right to use renewable energy and the priority for renewable energy in the overarching legal frameworks, including climate change legislation and constitutional law
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