Citizens' Participating in Energy Transformation: Lessons from Foreign Operation Modes of Community Wind Power

In the context of carbon reduction requirements amid global climate change and national calls for energy security from all over the world, energy transformation has been launched in various countries and community-based renewable energy has gradually become the trend of energy transformation. Combining power production and community residents, community wind power operates in the mode of decentralized equity income sharing, community participation or community interests agreement, and promotes the vision of sustainable green energy based on social trust constructed via the study process of dialogue and negotiation. Concrete meaning of energy democracy and community wind power are deconstructed from the perspective of citizen participation. This paper retrospects the practice pattern and development experience of community wind power cases in Germany, Denmark, Japan and the United States by discussing the four operation modes of community wind power, such as community participation, community fund, community investment and social enterprise. Then it discovers the importance of information disclosure and citizen participation in early stage as well as equal dialogue mechanism in the establishment and operation of the wind power project; and it concludes that, with the autonomy of community energy, community residents may be given the right to choose the electric power development, and further the participation right to influence national energy policies so as to guarantee the green development of renewable energy.