Citizens are being empowered. When we read the daily news it may not seem like it but the truth is that more and more things happen because citizens want it. It is a trend that can be seen all over the world. There are countries in which growing access to education is creating more conscious citizens, others in which it was the economic and social crisis that made us rethink our place as citizens. Civil activism is playing its role, whether against certain projects and policies or in support of human rights. Meanwhile, the rise of the internet is urging us to take action, with its social networks that, on the one hand promotes access to and facilitate the dissemination of information and, on the other hand, bring us closer to otherwise far away realities. Just think of movements like ""Blockupy"" or the ""Indignados"" which quickly spread around the world and involved millions of people. And to think that May of ‘68 occurred without a Facebook page… But there is a trend, greatly encouraged by citizens, which is increasingly assuming greater importance: impact investment, an investment type that reaches it’s the height of its expression in crowdfunding.

This type of investment differs from traditional forms by being associated with a social or environmental impact that those who invest want to help to make happen. There are several crowdfunding platforms in the world, some more general, such as Indiegogo (USA), others more focused on entrepreneurship, such as Kickstarter (USA) and others dedicated to areas such as the environment or renewable energies including Abundance Generation (UK) or Lumo (FR) Almost every country has its own examples. In Portugal, for example, the growth of this movement can be seen with platforms such as Massivmov or PPL, which have become national pioneers. These platforms already have significant investments and the projects funded on them have already produced records, films and new companies and have even financed an expedition to Antarctica. Even in the energy field, there are examples of citizen involvement and investment. In Portugal there are the electricity cooperatives, founded in the twentieth century, which electrified large rural areas of the country, and lately, Coopérnico. In 2012 we tried to initiate the creation of the first crowdfunding platform for renewable energy but the lack of legal framework in Portugal made it impossible to carry this activity with the necessary legal certainty. We started looking at the problem from an EU prespective and this is how Citizenergy was born.

These are some examples of the ongoing citizen revolution. Almost every day we hear about new models and citizens' initiatives: new political parties, new movements, ethical banking initiatives or investment platforms. People want to be present in the decision making, to know where their money is being applied, for whom it is generating profits and, increasingly, to have the power to help create a better world and via a cause with which they identify. We know that something is good when it results from civic investment. Nobody crowdfunds the building of a new nuclear power plant, the production of weapons or the launch of a deforestation campaign in the Amazon Rainforest.

by Nuno Brito Jorge, Boa Energia Based on an article published in Público on 3 July 2015