How Does it Work?

What Will a Typical CEED Company Do?

A CEED (Community Energy and Economic Development) company is the means by which each community can harness local talent and focus it on local energy needs, which in turn open up other economic development activities.

Unlike large-scale, corporate efforts such as electricity generation projects that feed into the national grid, the unique, distributed structure of the CEED program allows individual citizens to actively contribute to a clean energy future.

As Al Gore has suggested, the online network of Obama supporters formed during the election campaign should now be redirected to help bring change down to the local level. The transition to clean energy is exactly the kind of change that the CEED Program can effect at the community level. 

Each CEED company will provide a focal point for all energy-related activities within its community, including an inventory of existing resources, an energy conservation and efficiency program, a local biofuels program, solar initiatives, green building and landscaping, alternative food production and other activities that advance energy independence. These can encompass both for-profit and non-profit businesses. 

Each CEED will be tasked with linking with all the key players in the community that have concerns about local energy usage, including the town, city or county governments, chambers of commerce and the business community, farmers, local service station owners, local banks, environmental groups, etc., and crafting a plan for moving towards energy independence based on locally initiated efforts. 

This local plan is not dissimilar to a local community development plan, only it focuses on energy specifically, taking into account the community's current needs, projected needs, and the available local resources. How each CEED company implements the locally developed energy plan will vary by community, depending on the existing renewable energy infrastructure. 

The CEED company is also responsible for collecting the "best of the best" practices and products around renewable energy and disseminating that information locally, helping create new businesses — and jobs — around those products and services. To aid information sharing and to leverage learning nationwide, each CEED will also link to an online network of other CEED companies around the country, along with the federal, state and local governments involved in this effort.