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Power From the People: How to Organize, Finance, and Launch Local Energy Projects

August 13, 2012

More than ninety percent of the electricity we use to light our communities, and nearly all the energy we use to run our cars, heat our homes, and power our factories comes from large, centralized, highly polluting, nonrenewable sources of energy.

It doesn’t have to be that way. In Power from the People, energy expert Greg Pahl explains how American communities can plan, finance, and produce their own local, renewable energy that is reliable, safe, and clean.

Pahl uses examples from around the nation and the world to explore how homeowners, co-ops, nonprofits, governments, and businesses are already putting power in the hands of local communities through distributed energy programs and energy-efficiency measures.

Renewable, community power is a necessary step on the path to energy security and community resilience, particularly as we face peak oil, cope with climate change, and address the need to transition to a more sustainable future.

Foreword by Van Jones.

Published by Chelsea Green Publishing in collaboration with Post Carbon Institute. 2012. 288 pages. ISBN 9781603584098.

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Excerpts

Community Resilience Chat webinar (September 12, 2013):

See the other books in the Community Resilience Guide series:

Greg Pahl

Greg Pahl is the author of six books on sustainable living, and has written hundreds of articles and commentaries on sustainable living issues, wind power, solar energy, water power, geothermal energy, biomass, biodiesel, electric cars, "green" appliances, home building materials, and sustainable forestry management in publications such as The Vermont Times, Vermont Magazine, Champlain Business Journal, Vermont History, Middlebury College Magazine, and Mother Earth News.

Greg has had a long-time interest in environmental issues in general, and renewable energy in particular. He lived for a number of years "off the grid" in a wood-heated home powered by a wind turbine atop an 80-foot steel tower. Greg lives in Weybridge, Vermont with his wife Joy. For a number of years they heated their home with a biodiesel fuel blend, and more recently with wood pellets. They also have installed a solar domestic hot water system on their garage roof and they drive a hybrid-electric car.

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