Community energy is an integrated approach of using community owned energy capacity for providing energy to users within that community. Community energy is a way to circumvent the large scale electric utilities while keeping investment funds as well as potential returns on the investment within the community. Currently community energy is thought of as community owned alternative energy facilities, but could also be construed as one of the many community owned electric municipalities. There have been a variety of success stories involving community energy around the country.

Community energy can come in a variety of forms and potential uses with the most common being:

wind

solar

biofuels

Michigan is home to case studies in a wide array of community energy projects. Funding and economic incentives for community are provided publicly by the State of Michigan Energy Office as well as the Federal Government's Department of Energy.