Stefan Gsänger

Community Power as a Pillar of a Global 100% Renewable Energy Strategy 

Abstract

Renewable energies in all their forms are offered by nature in a distributed way. In order to harvest them for the benefit of human development, it is therefore necessary to implement primarily decentralized approaches and foster bottom-up processes, technically but also socially.

If used locally, renewable energies offer many social, economic and environmental benefits which can help citizens and communities around the world to achieve a good life. However, access to technology will define the degree to which these citizens and communities will be able to benefit from renewable energy, in particular in the so called developing countries.

Eventually the Energiewende, the global move towards renewable energy, can hence be seen as the new citizens’ rights movement of the 21^st century which understands and respects the ecological resources of our planet and aims at economic, political and environmental justice.

Biographical Sketch

Stefan Gsänger has been Secretary General of the World Wind Energy Association since 2003, and has managed the organisation since its foundation in 2001. Under his direction, WWEA has become the voice of the wind sector worldwide, with more than 600 members in over 100 countries to date, amongst them the major national and regional wind energy associations, companies and scientific organisations.

Mr Gsänger one of the initiators of the Global100%RE campaign and is member of, amongst others,

• executive committee of the Global100%RE campaign,
• managing committee of the International Renewable Energy Alliance,
• international steering committee of REN21

as well adviser to further governments and international organisations.

Mr. Gsänger has published numerous publications and has been an invited speaker at international conferences in more than 40 countries on all continents.

In 2011, Mr Gsänger received the Community Power Award of the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association.