This week John Farrell and Wade Underwood talk with Paul Spencer, President and founder of the Clean Energy Collective (CEC) in Carbondale, CO. The CEC is pioneering the process of delivering clean power-generation through medium-scale (mostly solar) facilities that are collectively owned by participating utility customers. In many ways, their community energy model is the “holy grail” because it has proven replicable in several places around the United States.
Paul Spencer and the Community Solar “Holy Grail”
By John Farrell, originally published by Institute for Local Self-Reliance
July 25, 2013
Tags: Community energy, decentralised power, solar power
Related Articles
Crazy Town: Episode 115. Toasting Bread Is WAY Harder Than You Think: The Challenges of a Renewable Energy Future
By Asher Miller, Rob Dietz, Jason Bradford, Resilience.org
If we unlocked unlimited green energy, what would we actually do with it? And are our dreams of a renewable-energy utopia sometimes just as delusional as the old fossil-fueled, drill-baby-drill mentality? Alex Leff of the Human Nature Odyssey podcast hosts this special Crazy Town highlights compilation.
December 3, 2025
Oil, AI, Electrification and the Next Big Crash
So, what have we got? A global economy staggering amongst geopolitical tension, a bubble to beat all bubbles, and the twin shocks of a (potentially permanent) oil price crash and the EV subsidies ending — and all with the backdrop of worsening climate change driving up inflation and inflicting constant disasters.
November 26, 2025
Electricity Price Squeeze: Something’s Going to Give
By Richard Heinberg, Resilience.org
Electricity is our energy future, but the details of that future are still sketchy. Right now, the picture is being drawn by billionaire investors, but it looks dark and dystopian. Surely more imaginative artists could do better.
November 26, 2025



