In Provence, this village has built its own hydroelectric power plant

In Velaux, 200 citizens gathered to transform an old mill into a modern power plant capable of supplying the equivalent of 150 homes with electricity. An example to follow for many villages in these times of energy transition.

A small rural town of 8,500 inhabitants, Velaux is crossed by the Arc, a river on which the ancients had installed a mill. In the 1960s, it became a true hydroelectric power plant: a supply channel and a « well » were dug, a pit in which water flows to better operate the turbine, and everything worked perfectly until a breakdown in 2002.

After 50 years of good and loyal service to the municipality, the plant is at a standstill and the cost of repairs makes us hesitate… Unless you take advantage of it? In 2016, the Velauxians met and created Provence Énergie Citoyenne, a company that will take over the work and resell the electricity produced. In two years, more than 200 citizens, inhabitants and enthusiasts, have joined the capital of this simplified joint stock company (a status chosen to attract investors in the future).

What the example of Provence Énergie Citoyenne in Velaux shows is that this development can be done in a citizen way; that is, with the involvement of the inhabitants and for their benefit rather than for that of large companies listed on the stock exchange like those that operate dozens of large power plants in France.

source of document dated june 13, 2022:

https://leseclaireurs.canalplus.com/articles/decouvrir/en-provence-ce-village-s-est-cotise-pour-avoir-sa-centrale-hydroelectrique?fbclid=IwAR0Q9cVYDcFxBiwQYoC1ERjeH7FpEw_zDYtygpzZoW7tnh64YZWhskzBpPw

Simply limiting yourself to the big dam would be a mistake, because these mini-plants can be very profitable. This is what the village of Velaux, west of Aix-en-Provence, found.

This article completes the list of municipalities that apply participatory local direct democracy. This list is presented in the section Downloads, Dossier Monnaie Pleine, external diagnosis, sociological environment: solidarity villages

This example uses the legal tools of our positive law with a simplified joint stock company, a structure that is well suited to the cooperative movement.

On fileane.com we present the tools of the Law forbidden by the leaders of the neoliberal capitalist economic system:

• subsidiarity in order to obtain the optimal shared solution that enables solidarity to be developed
• the use of a full currency and social rights to manage through common ownership, the development of the Common Goods and the achievements of works that raise the standard of living and are passed on to future generations.

These tools of the forbidden law were however used after 1945 for the reconstruction and modernization of France, especially a quasi-full currency with the “Treasury Tour” to assess the financing needs of public projects and the creation of debt-free money by the nationalized Bank of France and which is still nationalized today.

With these tools, it is a question of putting an end to neo-liberal policies and, since 1973, the obligation imposed on governments to borrow on the financial markets.

Our nuclear power plants, large dams, were built without indebtedness of the country, with full currency and the use of bills of exchange between the companies that carried out these works and major projects. Since 1973, these power plants that produce electricity have either had to use tax money or borrow on the financial markets, increasing our debt levels. Hence the disastrous policies of budgetary savings and the political will to privatize these public services to no longer bear the repayment of these private debts in the hands of the Anglo-Saxon financial oligarchy.

These local examples of micro hydroelectric power plants are a solution especially in the regions whose rivers have known textile factories and other factories whose turbines provided the energy of the machines but also the electricity of the neighboring village.

But these examples should not mask the fundamental problem which is neither nuclear, wind, hydroelectric, photovoltaic or other but the use or not of a currency created without debt or with indebtedness of citizens and states.

In the Networks of Life, there are no markets that submit their freedom of action to the people. It is the free cities, the teams of life projects, their Confederation that decide their objectives to manage human activity on its three levels. We then emerged from systems of power to develop a new flourishing humanistic and peaceful civilization, without conflicts and wars between leaders with greedy interests, who know only how to plunder wealth where it is.