Powerdown Project

Established in California in partnership with Post Carbon Fellow Richard Heinberg and students at New College California, the Powerdown Project is a student project that works to assist municipalities and communities in their efforts to continue delivering public safety, public works and essential services in the face of a decline in the supply of electricity, natural gas and oil. The Powerdown Project offers student-designed templates for assessing municipal and community vulnerabilities and identifies strategic responses to the challenges posed by a decline in the supply of cheap energy. The Project involves research on alternative energy resources and supplies support in the form of student assistance to municipalities working to “Powerdown”.

The Municipal Template

This template is an assessment methodology that can be used by community groups and concerned citizens to encourage their municipal government to develop responses to the challenges posed by a decline in energy supply. The template is flexible and can be used in municipalities of different structure and size.

The template is based on a series of steps, taking municipalities through a review of their basic service provisions and how these services may be vulnerable to energy supply disruptions, price shocks, and an overall decline in energy availability. The template allows municipalities to investigate the impacts of different energy supply and price shock scenarios, which provides them with a framework for developing short and long term responses.

 The role of this template is to get the "conversation" about energy decline started in the minicipal government context. The student-created template works to inform community members and encourage municipal action to start "Powering Down".

For more information about the Powerdown Project please contact Ellen Bicheler at

ellenbicheler@postcarbon.org