We The Power: How Community Energy Can Free People & Help The Planet
Originally published on The Beam.
By Emanuela Barbiroglio
Born and raised in the German city of Schönau, Sebastian Sladek learned the meaning of the word “community” quite soon. Words like “energy,” “power,” and “rebellion” immediately followed.
“Our city was small and traditionally conservative, a rural area in the middle of the Black Forest. My parents too were conservative people, always believing in what politicians say and never engaging,” he recalls. “Then Chernobyl switched something in their brains.”
“When the tragedy happened, we were deeply impacted and yet the administration didn’t have a plan. This opened my parents’ eyes.”
At his dining room table at home, Sladek witnessed endless meetings between his parents and their comrades-in-arms. They were taking over the Schönau power grid and founding their own as a civil society. In 1994, Elektrizitätswerke Schönau (EWS) was founded: finally a green-electricity supplier.
That might be the reason why Sebastian grew up with the firm belief that his studies would have brought him as far as possible from all of this. So he chose archaeology and, after, started his first excavation experiences.
Despite his efforts to find another path, a passion for the “community” drew him more intensely back to Schönau. In 2011, Sladek returned to the place that made his childhood so peculiar and became a member of EWS’ executive board. “I switched from history to the future,” he laughs.
Now EWS is different from the past, but the Schönauer Gefühl (the spirit of Schönau) remains and the basic idea never changed: together we can make a radical difference. As a cooperative company, the board communicates with members, who in turn help shape the company as partners. In addition, they involve many other stakeholders, including local municipalities, environmental protection organizations and cooperatives to promote climate protection.
By opting for EWS’ green electricity, customers direct the cash flow towards achieving a higher target. The product becomes part of the solution to climate change and, at the same time, the customer becomes part of the community working for a better world.
The true story of Sladek’s parents, the original Schönau “power rebels,” still inspires EWS’ goal of preserving the planet as a place worth living.
“There are always times when people feel depressed and powerless, until they meet a group that helps them come back to power. Being a group has always been my family’s solution, my siblings and I knew how it feels to be representative of a minority’s opinion and how to win.”
Participation is key. “You need to know that you can make a difference and you have to do it, but facing challenges is only possible through solidarity.”
Of course, Sladek’s family and friends had the privilege of not being afraid of repression “but that’s why we have the responsibility to both fight for future generations and defend others’ rights together with ours.”
Movements such as Fridays for Future send a message of hope, by allowing people to be actors in the process. “Taking part in an anti-nuclear protest with 215,000 people gives you a real strong feeling.”
Pioneers from the ‘90s had a long way in front of them, and yet after almost 70 years since the first reactor started operations in 1955, Germany is going to phase out nuclear power. By the end of 2022, it will be a memory.
“It took us years, but we made it.” While years are precisely what we are missing and, Sladek admits, his greatest fear is that we are wasting time.
That’s why even more communities have to take action. The good news is that it is already happening.
A new project by Patagonia is significantly called “We the Power” and includes a feature-length documentary shining a light on the citizen-led renewable community energy movement across Europe. Directed by David Garrett Byars, from the multi-award winning Patagonia film Public Trust, it will be screened at virtual and in-person events across Europe in combination with live presentations featuring local pioneers, from April 2021.
EWS Schönau is part of the film, alongside three other stories from the UK, Spain, and the European federation of citizens energy cooperatives (REScoop.eu).
“All these initiatives are led by very brave visionaries and very persistent people,” says Birgit Grossmann, enviro and marketing manager for Patagonia Germany.
The film will demonstrate the benefits that energy communities bring, both to locals and to the health of our home planet. It will also show people how they can get involved with the movement – or start their own – in their local area.
Indeed, the campaign dreams big: inspiring a citizen-led movement towards energy democracy across Europe, while educating on the crucial role that we can play in the transition from an economy based on fossil fuels to one based on renewable energy sources.
Grossmann is absolutely sure about this: “Citizens have to watch carefully what renewables are according to corporations.”
Meanwhile, Patagonia wants to help groups like EWS promote, legislate, or organize around renewable energy community solutions and their transcription into country-level law.
Patagonia believes that the predominant model of big energy companies and fossil fuel production must be changed, if Europe is to have any chance of getting to the net zero CO2 emissions level required by 2050 and stabilise global warming at 1.5°C.
“If we want to be serious about the Paris agreement, this is definitely necessary,” Grossmann adds. “But energy democracy has other advantages, like the possibility for local communities to make their own choices and see where their electricity is coming from, rather than blindly accepting what companies give to them. It also prepares the way for spreading renewables because acceptance is key. Finally, from an economic point of view it stimulates local employment and boosts it with money that would normally go to big external investors.
Today, one million European citizens are part of the movement. By 2050, more than 260 million people could be involved, generating 45% of the EU’s electricity demand.
So how does it work? It’s easy. All citizens have the right to join an energy community through becoming a member or co-owner. Every person who joins gets a share of the profits and is usually given the opportunity to buy energy at a fair price. As active participants in this growing movement, they are included in decisions such as where to invest and how to set prices.
In Sladek’s words, “the power of citizens is the power of mass.”
Autonomous taxi company Waymo faced scrutiny last month when a car was caught on video illegally passing a stopped school bus that was letting children off in Atlanta. Now, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is looking into it.
Georgia State Representative Clint Crowe seemed stunned after being presented with video of a Waymo driverless car illegally passing a stopped school bus on Briarcliff Road in Atlanta last month. “I’m a big fan of new technologies and emerging technologies and I think that driverless cars are going to become more prevalent,” he told local NBC news affiliate WBIR. “But we got [sic] to think about how they’re going to comply with the law.”
WBIR | Waymo illegally passes school bus
Crowe co-sponsored Addy’s Law in 2024. The legislation was named after 8-year-old Addy Pierce, who was killed in Henry County after being struck while crossing the street to get to her bus. The law stiffened penalties for illegally passing a stopped school bus, carrying penalties of up to $1,000 in fines and even jail time.
According to Crowe, those rules still apply to autonomous vehicles. “The majority of our traffic laws, the penalty is usually a fine and or driver’s license suspension. These cars don’t have a driver, so they don’t have a driver’s license and so we’re really going to have to rethink who’s the responsible party, who’s going to be responsible for being in control of that vehicle and who’s going to be the operator of that vehicle,” he said.
Crowe believes manufacturers should face stronger consequences when their vehicles break the law, saying the $1,000 fine doesn’t go far enough.
Now, thanks to pressure from social media and politicians like Crowe and Geoirgia State Senator Rick Williams, who helped co-author Addy’s Law, it seems like NHTSA is getting involved.
Prompted by media reports, the US Department of Transportation issued an investigation regarding Waymo’s AV, which states that, “the AV initially stopped, but then drove around the front of the bus by briefly turning right to avoid running into the bus’s right front end, then turning left to pass in front of the bus, and then turning further left and driving down the roadway past the entire left side of the bus. During this maneuver, the Waymo AV passed the bus’s extended crossing control arm near disembarking students (on the bus’s right side) and passed the extended stop arm on the bus’s left side.”
While it remains to be seen how much work NHTSA is actually doing amid the ongoing shutdown of the Federal government, it’s worth noting that, regardless of the outcome, Senator Williams said he plans to introduce new legislation that would hold driverless car companies accountable with higher fines if their vehicles violate traffic laws. If that passes in Georgia, it could set the stage for politicians across the US and even abroad to use similar fins to halt the spread of autonomous taxis in their states.
“Driverless cars should be stopped until it can be figured out,” said Williams. “We should not have this on the road. It’s too dangerous for our children.”
You can read NHTSA summary, below.
We’re typically pretty tech- and autonomous-forward here, but as a parent I would absolutely lose my s*** if a Waymo or Robotaxi or whatever else ran over my kid. but I’ve also seen plenty of human drivers blow past a school bus with a knee on the steering wheel and both eyes glued firmly to their phones. Let us know who you’d be more ready to trust with your kids’ lives in the comments.
SOURCES: WBIR, NHTSA, via School Transportation News.
If you’re considering going solar, it’s always a good idea to get quotes from a few installers. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
![Lion Electric school bus warranties voided, leaving districts stuck [update]](https://i0.wp.com/electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/07/unforgivable.jpg?resize=1200,628&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1)
Nobody ever says “this is business” before doing something nice, and the recently reborn Lion Electric company is keeping that streak alive by doing the unthinkable to cut costs: they’re going to void the warranties on hundreds of electric school buses.
UPDATE 01NOV2025: two Lion Electric buses caught fire, now they’re in more trouble.
This past summer, the fallout from Lion Electric’s dissolution reached a critical mass, and the company’s new owners — the Quebec-based real estate giants Groupe MACH — decided to cancel the warranties on electric school buses sold in the US, leaving many districts with unsafe or broken down buses and no recourse to get their money back while the brand continued to take orders and make money in Canada.
Now, it seems like even the Canadian fleets have some serious safety concerns. School Transportation News and the CBC report that The Quebec Ministry of Education has ordered Lion school bus models be taken out of service immediately after a pair of LionC electric buses caught fire in Montreal, Quebec on Sept 9th, leading to disruptions across the province and a renewed scrutiny of Lion bus safety (Lion360 diesel-powered school buses, which Lion manufactured prior to only producing electric vehicles in 2017, were also affected by the issue).
Lion Bus (the company’s new, official name), has issued an inspection bulletin detailing a four-hour repair, which reads, “We have identified some potential anomalies in a sub-component of the HVAC system that Lion obtains from a third-party supplier … in the interest of safety above all else, we request that Lion bus operators perform the following inspections and modifications: mandatory inspection of several low-voltage electrical connections, replacement of certain electrical connectors, replace fan fuses with less powerful ones, adding a fuse to an HVAC control panel circuit. This inspection and modification procedure must be carried out on all Lion360 (diesel) and LionC 3rd generation and earlier buses (Gen3, Gen2 and Gen1).”
No word yet on whether the issue impacts any of the few Lion Electric buses still on US roads, but remember: Lion Bus wouldn’t help you if it did.
You can read about Lion’s decision to leave US school districts holding the bag on its troubled products in the original July post, below, then let us know how you feel about Groupe MACH’s handling of the situation in the comments section at the bottom of the page.
The warranty story
In a letter issued to exiting Lion Electric customers last week, Deloitte Restructuring announced that the warranties on all Lion vehicles purchased outside of the company’s home Province of Quebec are null and void – leaving dozens of school districts in the lurch with stranded assets that won’t get fixed, and can’t be sold to generate funds for replacements.
“We are working with alternate vendors at the expense of the school district to help keep our electric buses functional and on the road,” explains Dr. Richard Decman, Superintendent of Herscher CUSD No. 2 district in Herscher, Illinois. “Currently, six of our 25 (Lion) electric buses need some type of repair.”
Student Transportation News reports that Lion buses represent fully half of Herscher’s overall fleet of 50 buses, and that the district has received nearly $10 million for the purchase of 25 electric buses and the related charging stations from various state and utility incentive programs.
Herscher isn’t the only district having problems with Lion buses. “All four Lion buses that we own are currently parked and not being used,” Coleen Souza, interim transportation director of Winthrop Public Schools, told Clean Trucking. “Two of them are in need of repairs which would cost us money which we are not willing to invest in because the buses do not run for more than a month before needing more repairs.”
More of the same in Maine, where Yarmouth School Department bought two Lion Electric buses in 2023 with the state covering the costs. According to Superintendent Andrew Dolloff, the buses almost never worked. “We’ve had some sporadic service over the past two years, but as soon as the tech leaves, the buses produce error codes again,” explained Dolloff. ” and “Then the technician quits or is released, and we wait a few months for the next response.”
Dolloff added that Yarmouth’s electric buses did not operate during the 2024-25 school year.
Lion’s new owners are seemingly uninterested in their customers’ plight – which might be easily dismissed if those new owners, Groupe MACH, weren’t also the old owners of Lion Electric.
That’s right, kids. Quebec-based real estate company Groupe MACH, which stepped in to “save” Lion Electric earlier this summer, along with Ontario-based Mirella & Lino Saputo Foundation, bought $90 million of equity in Lion Electric back in 2023. And, while the MACH people may not have been the ones who ultimately made the call about voiding the warranties (that decision was made by the Deloitte bankruptcy team), it is absolutely Group MACH who have, to date, not announced plans to continue to honor those warranties, either.
Make of that what you will.
Deloitte Lion letter
SOURCES: School Transportation News, Clean Trucking, Deloitte.
If you’re considering going solar, it’s always a good idea to get quotes from a few installers. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
The first-ever Liebherr MK 120-5.1E electric crane in customer hands has rolled into the narrow, historic streets of Bern’s old town at 20 meters tall with a 45 meter reach and (of course) zero emissions, no vibrations, and almost no noise.
Deployed by Swiss construction firm Zaugg AG Rohrbach, the new Liebherr electric mobile crane is working hard placing temporary roofs above operational construction sites. It’s precise work, since the narrow streets of Bern’s historic old town weren’t even built for cars — much less massive, five-axle construction machinery. The prices controls and smooth operation of the electric drive mean the MK120-5.1E’s operators could confidently navigate the narrow streets without causing damage and creating new, unpaid jobs for themselves.
“The all-wheel steering allows us to manoeuvre easily in the narrow alleyways,” explained Stefan Stettler, head of the crane department at Zaugg AG Rohrbach. In reverse gear, the crane worked its way along the historic Rathausgasse to its construction site, past the arcades typical of the old town.
In addition to on-board power, the mobile crane can also be plugged into on-site grid power where available, or any mobile power sources capable of offering a steady 63 AMP output for lifting work. A mobile Liebherr Liduro Power Port LPO 100 was on hand in Bern, made available to Zaugg expressly for this purpose. With the Liduro LPO 100 fully charged, Liebherr says the stored energy is good for two full days of crane work.
“The low-noise and emission-free crane work is naturally pleasant for (Bern’s) residents, tourists and passers-by,” explained Stettler. “Especially as we only extended the crane support on the side facing away from the construction site by 50 per cent, allowing pedestrians and cyclists to pass through at all times.”
The MK120-5.1E electric mobile crane offers 8,000 kg (~17,650 lbs.) of lifting capacity, and all of the crane’s drives and winches are powered by electric motors, eliminating both the need to “warm up” or service oil-based hydraulics. It can be had with either a 98 kWh on-board battery (shown) or a 544 hp Liebherr diesel genset.
Electrek’s Take
From compact wheel loaders to radical two-wheeled dumper concepts to massive battery electric retrofit excavators, Liebherr is absolutely killing it in the heavy equipment electrification race. Their electric equipment offerings are proving that EVs can get even the heaviest jobs done, and save big fleets even bigger money while doing it.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Liebherr, via Construction Equipment.
If you’re considering going solar, it’s always a good idea to get quotes from a few installers. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
-
Sports2 years agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports3 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Sports3 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment1 year agoHere are the best electric bikes you can buy at every price level in October 2024