Established in California in partnership with Post Carbon Institute Fellow Richard Heinberg and students at New College California, the Powerdown Project is a studen-driven project that assists municipalities and communities in their efforts to continue delivering public safety, public works, and essential services in the face of a decline in the supply of electricity, natural gas, and oil.

The Powerdown Project offers student-designed templates for assessing municipal and community vulnerabilities and identifies strategic responses to the challenges posed by a decline in the supply of cheap energy. Focusing on researching alternative energy resources, students involved in the project provide assistance to municipalities working to "Powerdown".

The Powerdown Project

My colleagues and I at New College of California (North Bay Campus) have recently been strategizing ways to make our program on Culture, Ecology, and Sustainable Community even more relevant to students’ needs and to our larger community during the coming period of energy descent. One of the ideas we have come up with is the following.

During their second semester, students will work together in groups to formulate a local plan for energy transition in response to the challenge of Peak Oil.

The class as a whole will choose a geographical locale—a city or county in Northern California. The Powerdown Plan that they collectively formulate during the semester will be published on the Internet and presented to decision-makers in the locale chosen (including the mayor, city council, and board of supervisors). In the course of two years or so, it should be possible for successive classes to design energy descent plans for the entire North Bay area. These Plans can then serve as models for other regions of the nation and the world.

Each group within the class will take responsibility for one aspect of the overall Plan: categories will include Food Security, Water Security, Local Energy, Local Economy, Local Governance, Public Health, and Education. Each group will assess current vulnerabilities to diminishing energy supplies, and identify sustainable low-energy alternative systems. A realistic timeline will be drawn up for the transition (including a step-by-step action plan), and a set of informational resources assembled (books, articles, web sites, and so on), taking into account existing local organizations and individuals doing relevant alternative work.

At the end of the semester, each group will present its section of the overall Plan in class; each will have 30 minutes for its presentation.

Decision-makers and media from the locale will be invited. However, in addition (and in view of the fact that few decision-makers are likely to attend this in-house lengthy presentation) the cohort will also make a briefer presentation at a local public forum, such as a city council or board of supervisors meeting, and will there deliver a printed and bound copy of the compiled Powerdown Plan.

Efforts will be made to publicize the Project via local and national media throughout the semester, and especially at the time of presentation.

The Powerdown Project begins soon!

Richard Heinberg
September 2005