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The residents of an English housing estate commissioned a 150-meter tall, 4.2 megawatt wind turbine they now 100% own to combat local poverty. (theprogressplaybook.com)

submitted 2 months ago by Lugh to c/futurology

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[–] Lugh 19 points 2 months ago (4 children)

I think renewable energy's decentralized nature is one of its most underappreciated features. You could never imagine a local community building a conventional electricity plant, they are centralized and that is the job of government.

I suspect the future will have much more local decentralized projects of this nature. When you can have robots running factories without the need for humans, why not self-finance and build these at the community level too? It's entirely feasible, and many people will want to do such things. It's initiatives like this that make me doubt the future will be dystopian.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

It’s something I love but it also terrifies me. The electric grid is huge, critical, incredibly complex, and has lots of room for catastrophic failure.

[–] bitchkat@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

In the US we actually do have municipal electric companies. But the vast majority are private for profit companies.

[–] sonori@beehaw.org 3 points 2 months ago

I can imagine it pretty well, seeing as in my neck of the woods a local village or neighborhood owned conventional power plant or desalination plant arn’t common, but they arn’t unheard of either as an alternative to everyone having their own individual generator and water maker. You just generally find them on small islands or very remote towns and villages.

Wind and solar have proven useful in augmenting these generators, and given how expensive diesel is they were some of the first to use it, but yes, people have been doing this for quite some time with conventional power generation.

[–] LesserAbe@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

Exciting/inspiring story, thanks for sharing!