Renewable energy cooperatives: collective actions, or investment games?

Abstract

In order to mitigate climate change, the energy system will have to change dramatically. Energy production has historically been a centralized process without citizen participation. Recently, the energy production system is becoming increasingly decentralized. However, a polycentric energy production system requires active citizen involvement. Renewable energy (RE) cooperatives are exemplary of citizen involvement in decentralized energy production. In RE cooperatives, citizens collectively own and manage RE projects, oftentimes at the local level. While wind cooperatives have been around since the 1980s, the establishment of a local energy market has increasingly led to the emergence of RE cooperatives.
RE cooperatives have been previously described as collective actions, facilitating to overcome the social dilemmas associated with climate change mitigation. However, research has not been conclusive in this matter. Moreover, RE cooperative research is mainly qualitative in nature. If RE cooperatives are to thrive in an increasingly competitive decentralized energy production system, quantitative research on their successful functioning is imperative.
This thesis aims to provide an empirical and quantitative account on the extend at RE cooperatives operate as collective actions. The question of this research is which factors stimulate success in RE cooperatives and how can this be explained by the RE cooperative’s function as collective actions?
The most important predictors of success in RE cooperatives are a high focus on renewable energy and high dividends. These are all determined by democratic decision making. Thus, the outcome of democratic decision making is a more important predictor of successful cooperation in RE cooperatives, than collective action variables. Collective action variables had some effects on cooperation, but most of their effects were limited. Moreover, the exact operationalization of these variables in RE cooperatives is different than what theory prescribes. Additionally, it is unsure how the core relationships of the collective action framework are exactly operationalized in RE cooperatives.