Concerns and Solutions

As the US Congress prepares to pass historic legislation that moves us towards a clean energy economy, the need arises for diverse business models to capture the wealth of the emergent green economy.  Government and market sectors have their own means to create benefit and profit from renewable energy development: through financing and banking tools, investors take advantage of government incentives: they get tax breaks, rebates, and renewable energy credits.  Solar energy development by nonprofit, cooperative efforts is not similarly rewarded.   We have no business plan for communities to capture the potential wealth of the green economy and make sure it continues to work for their neighborhoods. We can do this with Solar Commons.


What are the Commons?
Examples of the Commons
How we manage our Commons
Strengthen our Commons
Why Right of Way?
Why Trusts?
Using right of way and trusts, the Solar Commons Project began to build an alternative business model that creates a niche in the green economy for a commons-based approach to renewable energy development.  With multiple bottom lines, the Solar Commons plan is taking shape.  Read about our business plan and our demonstration project. 

The Solution We Offer: The Solar Commons Concept and Design

The History of our Design:Embedded in the Work of Elinor Ostrom and Peter Barnes

The business model was based on commons principles familiar to those following the work of the 2009 Nobel Laureate in Economics, Elinor Ostrom. 

Professor Ostrom has studied commons management systems involving ecosystems such as forests and fisheries and human systems such as water associations in Los Angeles, police departments in Indiana, and irrigation systems in Nepal.  Ostrom’s work shows how communities have long been successfully adapting commons to their local challenges, using commons management to equitably solve social problems and sustainably manage ecosystems.   The Solar Commons, an invited topic to Prof. Olstrom's Workshop on commons management systems, is part of this long standing tradition.   Here are a few commons principles reflected in the Solar Commons:

  • One principle of a well-managed commons system according to Ostrom is transparency.  The use of a trust ownership model for managing common wealth revenue created by selling solar energy generated in the public right of way follows this principle.  The money can be transparently managed and predistributed for the public good.  A community trust can also mandate that the green economy’s common wealth will be managed to protect the resource for future generations.

  • Ostrom’s research also showed that a successful commons-managed system would be monitored by people who are part of or accountable to the users.  Co-management is  “managing with” rather than “managing for.”  In Arizona, solar energy production is managed by the state’s regulatory agency, the Arizona Corporation Commission.   Unlike California or Oregon or New Jersey, Arizona does not yet have net metering which would allow small scale producers of solar energy, like the Solar Commons, to sell electricity into the grid. In Arizona, the Solar Commons would have to sell electricity to adjacent users employing a contract called a “solar services agreement”.  But even that arrangement has not been clearly provided for yet and Solar Commons will have to seek ACC approval.  As of now, Arizona’s rules for managing solar energy favor large scale, corporate owned and investor financed solar systems.  The success of our pilot project in Arizona will, we believe, pave the way for other small scale, distributed systems to flourish.  If the ACC expands it regulatory model to include the solar commons, it will be managing with us.

  • Another key principle of a successfully managed commons, according to Ostrom, involves access.  Rules allowing a common pool resource to be used should be flexible.  They should adapt to local circumstances. The Solar Commons understands right of way as a commons management system for citizens using shared urban space.  In the city of Phoenix, government and for-profit entities have successfully accessed our right of way.  They have placed traffic lights, utility and sewer lines, cable hardware and cell phone stations among other things.  But there are no nonprofit, civic sector groups accessing right of way for their ventures. The  Solar Commons helps the City of Phoenix create a more accessible right of way system, open to community groups seeking to benefit from the wealth creating potential of the green economy.

Another key theorist of the kind of management system proposed by the Solar Commons is Peter Barnes, a founders of the advocacy institution On the Commons.   Barnes is a businessman and former co-owner of Working Assets.  He has co-authored articles with Elinor Ostrom about how to create a commons management structure for the atmosphere.  Barnes work, Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons, offers principles to grow a robust commons sector that can interact with a well-regulated corporate sector.  Government’s role is to maintain a healthy balance between civic commons and corporate sectors.  Barnes understands that we need both a commons and a market sector.  If a market sector has its institutions-- banks and corporations—that are well protected by the state, then the commons sector needs its institutions—trusts and trustees, legal entities that can be mandated to take care of our common assets—water, air, ecosystems, energy infrastructures—for future generations. Trusts, Barnes explains, can be legally protected from the re-election pressures politicians feel.  They can be buffered from the influence of money and special interest lobbyists. 

The Solar Commons has used many of these principles in setting up its legal, economic, social and cultural frameworks.