http://www.schumachersociety.org/

The "Classic" of local self reliance, autonomy and sustainable economy.

http://www.ilsr.org/

Since 1974, ILSR has worked with citizen groups, governments and private businesses in developing policies that extract the maximum value from local resources.

http://www.newrules.org/

Designing Rules As If Community Mattered

for instance, here is their page on local distributed energy initiatives http://www.newrules.org/de/index.html

Highly relevant for us is also what they write on information

http://www.newrules.org/info/index.html

The Planet Drum Foundation

http://www.planetdrum.org

The Institute For Appropriate Technology

http://www.i4at.org/library.html