Energy is the circulatory system of a modern society: it enables health services, food systems, transport, communication, and digital infrastructure, but also drives most greenhouse gas emissions and many local pollution impacts. A robust energy foundation today must therefore balance three goals at once: reliable access for all, affordability, and compatibility with planetary boundaries (climate, air quality, ecosystems).
Because direct access to up to date external data is not available, absolute numbers and specific recent statistics below are presented cautiously and should be cross checked against the latest official sources (e.g. IEA, IRENA, IPCC, national energy agencies) before publication.
Energy – Powering sustainable living
Energy is essential for almost everything people value: safe housing, cold chains for medicines, clean water pumping, mobility, communication, and digital services. Modern energy systems convert primary resources (sun, wind, water flows, biomass, fossil fuels, nuclear fuels) into useful services such as light, heat, motion, and computing.
However, conventional fossil based energy is a major driver of climate change, air pollution, and ecosystem stress. Scientific assessments consistently show that to limit dangerous climate change and reduce health impacts from air pollution, societies need to move rapidly towards efficient, low carbon and low pollution energy systems while ensuring universal access and reliability.
A resilient energy foundation for communities—villages, cities, regions—has three key qualities: it is clean (low emissions and pollution), reliable (available when needed), and fair (accessible and affordable for all, with benefits shared locally).
Six core aspects for community energy:
For any community, large or small, the following six aspects provide a practical structure. Each aspect can be adapted to local conditions, technologies, and cultural preferences.
- Clean generation
- Focus on local and regional renewable options such as solar photovoltaics, solar thermal, wind, micro hydro, sustainable biomass/biogas, geothermal, and where appropriate, larger grid scale renewables.
- The choice of technology should consider resource availability, land and water use, impacts on biodiversity, and lifecycle emissions (including materials and manufacturing), aiming to minimize total environmental footprint, not just carbon.
- Smart and flexible storage
- Use a mix of storage options (batteries, thermal storage in water or buildings, pumped hydro where feasible, compressed air, and—only when justified—green hydrogen or other chemical storage) to better match variable supply and changing demand.
- At the community level, storage design should prioritize safety, maintainability, recyclability of materials, and integration with local uses (e.g. using hot water tanks as thermal batteries, or EV batteries providing grid services).
- Efficiency and demand side measures
- The cleanest energy is the energy not used. Improving building insulation, shading, passive design, efficient lighting and appliances, and high efficiency motors and industrial processes can significantly reduce total demand.
- Demand side management—such as shifting flexible loads (water pumping, cooling, EV charging) to times when renewable power is plentiful—reduces peak demand, lowers costs, and eases integration of solar and wind.
- Community microgrids and resilient networks
- Community scale microgrids (for villages, neighborhoods, campuses, industrial zones) can combine local renewable generation, storage, and smart controls to keep power running even when the wider grid fails.
- These systems can be interconnected with larger grids for reliability, but designed so that critical services—clinics, water, communication, emergency shelters—can operate in “island mode” during outages or disasters.
- Skills, maintenance, and local capacity
- Technical and organizational skills are as important as hardware. Training local technicians, engineers, planners, and community energy managers ensures systems can be installed safely, maintained over decades, and upgraded as needs evolve.
- Capacity building should include not only technology (e.g. solar, batteries, inverters, controls) but also safety standards, energy auditing, planning tools, and basic data skills for monitoring performance.
- Governance, ownership, and policy models
- Community energy works best when governance is clear and benefits are shared fairly. Possible models include energy cooperatives, municipal utilities, community owned projects, or public–community partnerships.
- Policies and local rules can support fair tariffs, avoid over indebtedness, ensure access for low income households, and provide mechanisms for community input and oversight.
- These six aspects can be used as a checklist when designing, assessing, or improving local energy systems.
Global context and key challenges
Even without quoting precise figures, several robust scientific insights are clear:
- Global energy demand has grown over recent decades, driven by population growth, rising incomes in many regions, urbanization, and expanding digital infrastructure.
- Electricity is becoming increasingly central: more end uses (transport, heating, industrial processes, data centers) are being electrified because efficient electric technologies (e.g. heat pumps, electric motors, LEDs) can provide the same service with less energy use than fossil alternatives.
- Renewable electricity—especially solar and wind—has grown rapidly and now accounts for a large share of new power capacity additions worldwide. In many places, new solar or wind is among the lowest cost sources of electricity over its lifetime.
- Despite this progress, fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas) still supply a large share of total primary energy, and associated CO₂ and methane emissions remain incompatible with pathways that limit global warming to well below 2 °C, let alone 1.5 °C.
The core challenge is to meet rising energy service needs—cooling in hotter climates, mobility, industrial production, digital services—while rapidly reducing emissions, air pollution, and other environmental impacts. This requires changes not only in technologies but also in behavior, planning, finance, and institutions.
Priority directions for a strong energy foundation
- For communities and societies seeking to build a future proof energy foundation, several high impact directions emerge from current research and practice:
- Prioritize efficiency first
- Make buildings and processes highly efficient through design, retrofits, and performance standards. Reducing waste lowers bills, eases pressure on grids, and makes all other transitions cheaper and faster.
- Electrify where it makes sense
- Shift vehicles, heating, and many industrial processes from direct combustion of fossil fuels to efficient electric technologies, paired with low carbon electricity sources. This simplifies decarbonization because emissions can then be tackled at the power system level.
- Scale clean power with supporting infrastructure
- Expand solar, wind, and other low carbon sources alongside upgraded grids, storage, and flexible demand. Permitting, grid interconnections, and planning processes should be streamlined while maintaining strong environmental and social safeguards.
- Phase down unabated fossil fuels
- Gradually reduce and avoid new long lived fossil fuel infrastructure that does not have credible plans for deep emissions reductions, to prevent “lock in” of high emissions and stranded assets. This includes careful planning for coal phase down and managed transitions in oil and gas.
- Reduce methane and other non CO₂ emissions
- Address leaks and flaring in oil and gas systems, improve management of coal mines, and reduce emissions from waste and agriculture where possible. Cuts in methane can deliver relatively rapid climate benefits.
- Support hard to abate sectors with targeted solutions
- For activities that are difficult to electrify (certain industrial processes, long distance aviation and shipping), develop and deploy sustainable low carbon fuels (such as green hydrogen based fuels or advanced sustainable biofuels) in a cautious, evidence based way, ensuring that feedstocks and production do not undermine food security or ecosystems.
- Adopt circular and materials efficient approaches
- Design products and infrastructure to use fewer materials, last longer, and be reused or recycled. This reduces energy demand in mining, manufacturing, and waste handling, and limits pressure on ecosystems.
- Protect ecosystems and respect land and water constraints
- Integrate energy planning with land use and water planning. Avoid projects that cause significant biodiversity loss, deforestation, or water stress. Prioritize siting on already disturbed land (rooftops, brownfields, infrastructure corridors) when possible.
- Ensure a just and inclusive transition
- Plan for workers and communities affected by shifts away from fossil fuels: reskilling, social safety nets, and new economic opportunities. Ensure low income households benefit from efficiency upgrades and modern energy access, not just wealthier groups.
- Strengthen data, monitoring, and participation
How to Contribute:
This Energy component is meant to be a flexible base that communities and experts can expand. You can help by:
- Sharing local case studies on renewable projects, microgrids, efficiency programs, or just transition initiatives—including what worked, what failed, and why.
- Providing practical tools or guides for design, installation, maintenance, governance, and financing of community energy systems.
- Offering training, workshops, or educational materials that build local skills in energy planning, technology, and data use.
- Proposing additional sub topics that should be covered under the energy foundation (e.g. energy poverty, health impacts of air pollution, gender and energy, digitalization and data centers) and adding content for them.
Together, these contributions can turn this component into a living reference for communities designing energy systems that are reliable, fair, and compatible with a thriving planet.
