Renewable Energy Worcester Community Energy Co-op
RENEW is a diverse, grassroots group of Worcester residents who are committed to working for energy democracy in our community
RENEW Empowers Community
As a grassroots group, RENEW organizes and participates in events and forums to engage our community in co-learning about our changing energy system.
RENEW in the community…
We work with community members to plan, organize, and build community-owned solar projects that benefit the most energy-burdened residents and communities in our city. Together, we create and facilitate strategic partnerships that enable access to the required expertise to develop and oversee clean energy projects from conception to launch and beyond, while staying true to the core guiding principles of energy democracy.
Juneteenth 2025
Standing in Solidarity This weekend, we joined dozens of local vendors and organizations at the annual Black Heritage Festival’s Juneteenth Festival….
Capacity Building Grant Award
RENEW, through our fiscal sponsor Worcester Roots, Awarded Environmental Justice Grant In May, we received a Capacity Building Grant from the…
Soft Launch: General Interest Event
Despite unexpected glitches and delays, the soft launch of our general interest community events was lively and informative….
Our Vision
We envision building capacity to support decentralized renewable energy projects guided by residents of Worcester’s diverse neighborhoods, who would have an ownership stake in projects they co-lead. We can envision a multi-stakeholder co-operative with membership classes for workers, energy subscribers, and community leaders, supported with legal, policy, and financial resources. The cooperative would exist not just to build solar projects but to build a membership aligned with the values of energy democracy: shared ownership of assets and deeply democratic decision-making, as part of a broader effort to address the intersecting crises around climate, housing, economic, and racial justice.
Our Mission
RENEW is a diverse, grassroots group of Worcester residents committed to advancing energy democracy in our community. Energy democracy shifts structures of ownership and control in an extractive, dirty energy system that is increasingly unaffordable, putting community residents at the helm of decision-making. Energy democracy sets up decentralized infrastructure for clean, renewable energy projects that prioritize community benefits over shareholder profits.
As an energy democracy group, RENEW works with community members to plan, organize around, and build community-owned solar projects that benefit the most energy-burdened residents and communities in our city. We facilitate strategic partnerships that enable access to the expertise needed to develop and oversee clean energy projects from conception to launch and beyond—projects anchored in the principles of energy democracy.
As a grassroots group, RENEW organizes and participates in events and forums to engage our community in co-learning about our changing energy system. We aim to create pathways for communities to participate in the energy transition, to reap the benefits of ownership, and step up to co-governing the renewable energy projects they develop.
Our Values
We are a Community Energy Cooperative of Co-op Power, a regional energy co-op that operates through local chapters
As a regional CEC of Co-op Power, we overcome historical barriers (such as financing; technical expertise, and trust) that have prevented low income individuals, nonprofits, and small businesses from going solar in order to plan, build, develop, and manage community-owned solar projects that benefit Worcester residents. We ensure that our solar energy projects include local living wage jobs.
We Do This Through
Our Values
Participatory Decision-making
We believe that shared decision-making is the key to equity. We practice consensus-based decision-making in our organization. One role of RENEW Worcester is to support more members of our community in participating in decision-making on energy system issues.
Shared ownership
We are committed to building projects that make a material difference to residents, not only by lowering costs but also by creating structures of shared ownership that offer passive income to residents who face historical barriers to wealth-building.
Community
Solutions come from the ground, from place-based lived experience. We are committed to grassroots organizing with residents who are most impacted by dirty, unaffordable energy. We develop renewable energy projects that are community-led, community-owned, and collectively governed.
Accountability
We hold ourselves accountable to Black, Indigenous, low-income, and communities of color who are most impacted by extractive energy and economic systems.
Cooperation
RENEW operates as a co-operative. Membership requires that members share their ideas and participate in decision-making. All members are trained in anti-oppression practices to facilitate working with others across differences in social positioning. We view conflict as. We support the growing movement for a co-operative economy in Worcester and beyond.
Leadership development
We commit to shared leadership within our organization. Long-time members of RENEW invest in “downloading” knowledge, developing the expertise of newcomers, and staying open to their ideas and concerns. Newer members of RENEW commit to voicing their opinions, ideas, and concerns and to becoming carriers of knowledge and expertise they can pass on to others. In this way, we build not just an organization or business but a culture that embeds our founding values.
Sustainability
We prioritize people and the planet over profits. RENEW seeks to support the economic, environmental, and social needs of existing communities without compromising the needs of future generations.
Environmental Stewardship
RENEW believes in the conscientious care of our planetary systems (of which we are part!) We are committed to renewable energy solutions that reduce our carbon footprint without harming the environment. We site solar projects on developed lands that prevent further fragmentation of New England forests and natural landscapes.
Personal, interpersonal, collective, and institutional transformation
We believe we must change ourselves as well as our institutions to support equity in all dimensions (race, ethnicity, gender, class, kinds of knowledge, kinds of ability, etc).
Problem Solving
We learn through doing. We are tackling the intersectional problems associated with the current fossil-fuel-based energy system, the challenges of transitioning to renewable energy, and the organizing challenge of building community capacity to develop collectively owned and governed renewable energy systems.
Why RENEW Does It
100% Renewable Energy Is Not A Sufficient Response.
The currently dominant economic system treats energy as a commodity to be exploited for profit. We can fuel our economy with renewable energy sources and yet leave in place the social, legal, and economic structures that prioritize property rights over human rights, that alienate people from one another and from mother nature that sustains all life.
By doing so, we perpetuate the systemic inequalities that allow profit-seeking business interests to exploit our resources, extract wealth from our communities, and unfairly burden the most marginalized members of our community with the highest energy costs and the most negative environmental and health outcomes. We believe there is another way.
The Opportunity In a Changing Energy System
We get electricity from an electrical grid that is owned by monopoly utilities and organized around big power plants far from consumers. The good news is that our utility no longer has monopoly control over where and how we source our energy, and a decentralized supply system creates exciting possibilities for energy democracy. We can now design energy systems that are owned and under the control of community members.
Subscribe to Our Newsletter
Subscribe to our e-mail list to receive our monthly newsletters! We include updates on projects, event announcements, and information on membership.
Let’s stay in touch so we can move forward together in solidarity!
Find Us
Address
RENEW Worcester
c/o Worcester Roots
4 King St.
Worcester, MA 01609
RENEW is a proud Community Energy Cooperative of Co-op Power as well as an independent energy democracy group.
Visit our CEC profile on CO-OP Power to learn more.
Thank you to our funders:
Funding for RENEW was provided by the New England Grassroots Environment Fund. The New England Grassroots Environment Fund energizes and nurtures local initiatives that create and maintain healthy, just, safe, and environmentally sustainable communities. We do this by moving resources to community-based organizers and shifting power in decision-making to those most impacted by the work.For more information, please visit grassrootsfund.org or call 603-905-9915.
Funding for RENEW was also provided through an Energy Equity Grant from Climate Nexus, a sponsored project of the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisers,
and by the Solstice Community Benefit Fund. The Solstice Community Benefit Fund supports community organizations focused on environmental justice initiatives and new clean energy development. Solstice is an impact-focused company working to share th benefits of clean energy with under-resourced communities. Through their Community Benefit REC program, Solstice aggregates corporate community investment to support new clean energy projects while providing financial benefits to under-resourced community members and the organizations that serve them.
Thank you also to the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs,
Office of Environmental Justice and Equity, for an Environmental Justice (EJ) Capacity Building grant.