the RePower network cooperative
cooperative culture
The RePower Network Cooperative is participating in the clean energy transition by leveraging sources of salvaged Lithium batteries from both EVs and consumer electronics to capture the remaining storage capacity. We are building a network to collect these batteries, test them and reprocess them into 2nd life energy storage products. Because of our partnerships with organizations already working at the community level we can efficiently access battery waste streams that slip by more centralized operations.
By creating a second life scenario for lithium ion batteries, the RePower Network Cooperative advances the transition to a clean & just energy economy in the following ways:
- Designing more affordable energy storage products that help integrate renewables into the electric grid mix and add resilience to the grid to mitigate the harm done by grid failures
- Easing demand on the supply chain of rare minerals
- Creating manufacturing jobs in an underemployed region formerly supported by coal mining
We look forward to connecting with you,
the RePower team,
Mission
The RePower Network Cooperative has come together around the common goal of providing for its worker-owner members in a way that advances the transition to a clean and just energy economy.
Our battery expertise combined with our ability to organize with key partners on a community level create a business model that provides both affordable energy storage products and services related to those products.
A renewable energy economy opens the way to a new, truly democratic economic model. Since no one can control access to the sun and if the generation equipment is affordable for small groups and individuals, the wealth is more likely to flow to whoever does the work of harnessing that energy. This can create a more distributed economic system, which leads to a more equitably distributed political system.
cooperative structure
The RePower Network Cooperative is incorporated as a worker owned company. A cooperative is an economic institution or business that is member-owned and democratically controlled by one-person one-vote.
Cooperative benefits
- Cooperatives tend to be productive and efficient businesses, able to maintain employment during downturns (which helps under a supply-and-demand model) because they make decisions about production, investment, distribution and dividends democratically.
- When workers who live near their place of employment make a company’s decisions about pollution, outsourcing labor or layoffs, they tend to weigh more heavily in favor of the community.
- Worker-owned and -managed firms help keep money in a community.
- Cooperatives are more inclined to invest in the personal development and autonomy of their workers.