GET INVOLVED
After seven years of experimentation in community-owned energy, People Power Solar Cooperative is composting. At the end of last year, Members voted to wind down the Cooperative and transfer our assets to OakTREE Initiative, a new nonprofit born from People Power's work.
This isn't an ending. It's a transformation.
What This Means: Cooperatives as Living Experiments
Cooperatives are experiments, not monuments. We are not meant to stand unchanged forever. We are meant to grow, adapt, and sometimes compost into new forms.
This is what living systems do. We grow, we learn, we change shape, and we compost what no longer serves into nourishment for what comes next. OakTREE itself is proof of this cycle: new growth emerging from the work we've done together.
When we started People Power in 2018, we thought we were building a particular kind of structure: one focused on member investment and owning solar projects at scale.
What we actually built was something more precious: a community of people learning together about energy as relationship, about cooperative economics, about what it means to shape our collective future.
That learning doesn't end with this organizational form.
That learning lives in each of us and continues to grow through the connections we've made, through every future project any of us touches, OakTREE and more.
What is OakTREE Initiative?
People Power's composting is feeding OakTREE's growth. What began as a Project Group within our cooperative has received 501(c)(3) status and is building something remarkable:
OakTREE envisions neighborhoods as rooted networks of a forest. Our communities already have what they need: knowledge, care, creativity, and grit.
We are building physical and social infrastructure connecting households to generate essential resources. Through shared energy, food, and skills, we build self-reliant neighborhoods, localized economies, and resilient community systems everywhere.
The thermal microgrid work, the urban agriculture assets, the vision of generational wealth through community ownership—all of this grew from seeds planted in People Power's soil. And it will keep growing, adapting, and sprouting new possibilities we can't yet imagine.
How Are We "Composting?"
OakTREE has received People Power's two remaining solar projects and is coordinating their sale to the homeowners who host them. The net proceeds would become a Restorative Fund designed to offer care and support to People Power Members most affected by this transition.
🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱
Gratitude and Hope
The number of people we thank is vast. We wouldn't have started without the audacity and bold vision from Janelle Orsi, Subin DeVar, Grayson Flood, Yassi Eskandari-Qajar, Jonathan Hung, YaVette Holts, Vivian Yi Huang, Angela Scott, Jessica Tovar, Franki Velez, lora jo foo, the Sustainable Economies Law Center, Survival Media Agency, SunWork, and many of our Advisors and Founding Anchor Members here. Jonathan Welle trusted our audacity and took our Commons Model as a foundation for Cleveland Solar Cooperative in Ohio.
Our work emerged from the hope in action and dedication of many who came together in community. Many of our Members brought their individual and organizational capacity, forming a cooperative culture. These partnerships resulted in dozens of creative projects mostly viewable on our projects page and in our Project Gallery, all stewarded by ALL of our beloved People Power Members. So many partners contributed to these projects, including Asian Pacific Environmental Network, East Oakland Neighborhood Initiative, Local Clean Energy Alliance, Ava Community Energy, Ingleside Community Power, Shareable, Solar Rights Alliance, Energy Democracy Project, Shake Energy Collective, and many many more, we thank you.
We give special thanks to hannah bouscher-gage and our long-time Board Members – Selena Feliciano and Marquita "Keta" Price – for the direct facilitation of the many collaboration. Scott Owades and Kylie Flanagan gave us the most critical bridge to cross through our toughest period. Without you, we wouldn't be here today. In this journey, we continue to carry the spirit of Kareem Shihab, Prescott Reavis, Al Weinrub who injected so much energy into our mission before transitioning to becoming our ancestors.
All of this — the people, the partnerships, the persistence — brought us here. And you were part of it.
Thank you for following this experiment over the past seven years. (here is a summarized timeline)
Thank you for believing that everyday people could shape our energy future.
What we built together doesn't disappear: the connections, the learning, the vision of energy as relationship rather than commodity.
It transforms.
It roots deeper.
It grows new branches.
Cooperation is resilient, adaptive, and eternal as long as we keep showing up for each other, keep learning together, and keep believing in our collective power to create the world we need.
People Power Solar Cooperative may be composting, but the power of people coming together? That's just getting started!
Stay Connected
The community, the vision, the work—it's all still here.
Join OakTREE's Newsletter at https://www.oaktree.eco/
With profound gratitude and boundless hope for what we'll build together next,
The People Power Solar Cooperative Board
Adrionna, Brandi, Crystal, and Yasir
