Power to the People: Community Energy as a Health System
This Mobilized News event series explores how communities worldwide are taking back control of energy —
treating it not as a commodity, but as shared infrastructure for health, resilience, and justice.
The Big Picture:
The Systems View: Energy, Ecology & Interdependence
Seeing energy as the circulatory system for everything: food, mobility, housing,
governance and community well-being — and redesigning as a whole.
Why this track
Underneath air pollution, energy poverty, and climate risk is the same root cause:
extractive energy systems designed for profit, not public health.
Communities are flipping the script — building solar co-ops, microgrids, resilience hubs,
and Indigenous-led energy projects that keep value, power, and decision-making close to home.
Who this is for
- Community organizers, cooperatives & municipal leaders
- Public health, climate resilience & emergency management teams
- Engineers, grid innovators & local utilities
- Indigenous nations and Global South communities leading the transition
- Journalists, filmmakers & creators telling solutions stories
Energy as a Public Health System
How clean, community-owned power cuts asthma, heat stress, and medical bills — and why
grid decisions should be treated as public health decisions.
Community Solar, Microgrids & Local Ownership
Co-ops, municipal utilities, and neighborhood microgrids that keep energy local and
reinvest savings back into housing, transit, and care.
Indigenous & Ancestral Energy Sovereignty
Indigenous nations designing renewable projects that align with land, culture, and
long-term stewardship — not short-term extraction.
Electrifying Everything, Together
How communities coordinate EVs, heat pumps, and building retrofits so that electrification
lowers bills, not overwhelms the grid.
Financing the Future Co-operatively
Community bonds, green banks, pay-as-you-save models, and public–public partnerships
that make local clean energy affordable at scale.
Resilience Hubs & Disaster-Ready Communities
Schools, libraries, churches and clinics as solar-plus-storage “lifeboats” during
blackouts, storms and heatwaves.
Participatory Power Planning
Citizens’ assemblies, participatory budgeting and community benefits agreements that
bring people directly into energy decision-making.
The Global South Leads
Villages, towns and cities in the Global South leapfrogging fossil fuels with
decentralized solar, mini-grids and women-led energy enterprises.
Youth, Creators & Citizen Media
Young leaders and local creators using storytelling, podcasts, and TikToks to turn
clean energy from abstract policy into relatable, local action.
