In the UK we tend to culturally averse to cooperation in general.

I cant see the working as some wont want to pat their share of the running costs, renewal of parts, management, service etc. The whole thin is fraught with problems and I cant see it working. Leaving aside the air quality and pollution aspects.

The idea is a novel one, though. The co-op actually own the plant. They pay to install and fuel it, install the distribution system, maintain the whole caboodle. They then sell the energy produced to the people the plant is servicing.

Shareholders get their income from the sale of the energy to whoever, direct to consumer or grid (if electricity generated) to get whatever green-tax generated grant applies.

Co-op owned CHP basically. The co-op gets the income, the consumer(s) on whose site the plant is based getting the output.

I suspect that it is a tad elitist in that the scenarios into which such a scheme fits are pretty damn exclusive. The film I watched of the one scheme didn't include terraces of council houses, but featured VERY large communities of apartments in VERY large converted country piles.

Participants also seemed to be missing the point that whilst the cooperative schemes did indeed give members one vote each, regardless of the size of their individual investment, they could find themselves out-voted to see the co-op accept developments of their scheme they didn't want as individuals. In the co-operative scenario the view of the majority of shareholders, who will outnumber the consumers within a particular scheme, prevails.

You could, I suppose, buy up 51% of the shares and block out any outsiders... Oh, I forgot, that would still only buy you one vote.

And these biomass plants don't come cheap.