More and more local bottom-up energy initiatives are emerging. Those involved encounter many barriers during the realization of their ideas. As the generation of renewable energy is mostly included, these local initiatives contribute to the targets set at regional, national & EU level. At the same time, they are an indication that end-users themselves want to be part of the energy transition. What are the reasons for citizens to organize themselves and start and initiative? What kind of barriers do they encounter? What does this mean for roles and responsibilities of professionals? And to what kind of opportunities does this lead for products and services? Answers to these questions provide a solid starting point to develop methods and instruments to stimulate,facilitate and upscale local energy initiatives. This paper bundles the outcomes of three workshops and three additional interviews in the Netherlands as part of the European E-hub project. Conclusions can be drawn on needs and drivers, barriers, risks and solutions (lessons learned), possible roles for professionals and opportunities for new products and services.
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Abstract: The transition towards renewable and sustainable energy is being accompanied by a transformation of communities and neighbourhoods. This transition may have huge ramifications throughout society. Many cities, towns and villages are putting together ambitious visions about how to achieve 100% sustainable energy, energy neutrality, zero carbon emission or zero-impact of their communities. We investigate what is happening at the local community level towards realizing these ambitions from a social perspective. We use the case study approach to answer the following question: how do local community energy initiatives contribute to a decentralized sustainable energy system? We find that especially the development of a shared vision, the level of activities and the type of organisation are important factors of the strength of the ‘local network’.
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The municipality of Apeldoorn had polled the interest among its private home-owners to turn their homes energy neutral. Based on the enthusiastic response, Apeldoorn saw the launch of the Energy Apeldoorn (#ENEXAP) in 2011. Its goal was to convert to it technically and financially possible for privately owned homes to be refurbished and to energy neutral, taking the residential needs and wishes from occupants as the starting point. The project was called an Expedition, because although the goal was clear, the road to get there wasn’t. The Expedition team comprised businesses, civil-society organisations, the local university of applied sciences, the municipality of Apeldoorn, and of course, residents in a central role. The project was supported by Platform31, as part of the Dutch government’s Energy Leap programme. The #ENEXAP involved 38 homes, spread out through Apeldoorn and surrounding villages. Even though the houses were very diverse, the group of residents was quite similar: mostly middle- aged, affluent people who highly value the environment and sustainability. An important aspect of the project was the independent and active role residents played. In collaboration with businesses and professionals, through meetings, excursions, workshops and by filling in a step- by-step plan on the website, the residents gathered information about their personal situation, the energy performance of their home and the possibilities available for them to save and generate energy themselves. Businesses were encouraged to develop an integrated approach for home-owners, and consortia were set up by businesses to develop the strategy, products and services needed to meet this demand. On top of making minimal twenty from the thirty-eight houses in the project energy neutral, the ultimate goal was to boost the local demand for energy- neutral refurbishment and encourage an appropriate supply of services, opening up the (local) market for energy neutral refurbishment. This paper will reflect on the outcomes of this collective in the period 2011-2015.
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The energy transition requires the transformation of communities and neighbourhoods. It will have huge ramifications throughout society. Many cities, towns and villages have put together ambitious visions about how to achieve e.g. energy neutrality, zero-emission or zero-impact. What is happening at the local level towards realizing these ambitions? In a set of case study’s we investigate the following questions: How are self-organized local energy initiatives performing their self-set tasks? What obstacles are present in the current societal set-up that can hinder decentralized energy production? In our cases local leadership, vision, level of communication and type of organisation are important factors of the strength of the ‘local network’. (Inter)national energy policy and existing energy companies largely determine the ‘global’ or outside network. Stronger regional and national support structures, as well as an enabling environment for decentralized energy production, are needed to make decentralized sustainable energy production a success.
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There is growing realisation amongst local communities that the organizations and societies within which they live and work need to become more sustainable in order to secure their social, environmental and economic futures (Coyle 2011, Müller et al. 2011). The underlying motivations vary but are often traceable to an increased need for certainty or security. The search for solutions is in part practically orientated towards resilience to different forces of decline. Whilst sometimes manifested in individuals it is more often evident within local initiatives seeking common ground and related to perceived needs for local independence or increased self-determination (Musall & Kuik 2011, Seyfang & Haxeltine 2012). In our project and in this paper, our focus is on local initiatives as opposed to developments at regional or strategic scales. In the Northern Netherlands such local initiatives are often comprised of village residents or more heterogeneous groups from the wider rural community, with local initiatives co-existent in urban areas and cities. Local initiatives may focus on different sustainability issues (or a combination of them), such as transportation, energy, water, natural environment, food production, solid waste or the local economy (Coyle, 2011). However, many of these local initiatives focus on energy issues and solutions, while they might expand their interests to other issues after a prolonged existence. Therefore, in this paper we refer to these local or communal activities as Local Energy Initiatives (LEI’s) that are at the grassroots of sustainable transitions.
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In the last decade, the number of local energy initiatives (LEIs) has increased in western European countries. Although several success factors and barriers in the development of LEIs have been studied by other scholars, there has been limited scholarly interest in the overall impact of LEIs so far. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore their impact by determining their achievement. Additionally, levels of engagement were used to categorise the success factors for and barriers that impede this impact. Initiatives in two provinces in the north of the Netherlands were studied. For the data collection, 84 in-depth interviews were conducted with the initiators of LEIs. In general, it can be concluded that the impact of LEIs is limited. Success factors and barriers in the development of LEIs play out at different levels of engagement: the level of the initiative itself; the community level; and the public–private level. Theoretically, this study provides empirical insights on how to measure the impact of LEIs. Furthermore, the study brings together a variety of factors that influence this impact based on the levels of engagement. Practically, this research offers indications on how to contribute to the further development of LEIs.
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Against the backdrop of depopulation and Big Society, citizen initiatives in rural areas are believed to be able to mitigate service-provision inequalities between urban and peripheral regions. Factors influencing the success and failure of such citizen initiatives and their potential in providing solutions to perceived problems have thus far hardly been explored. Our previous work on potential aspects of success and failure indicates that the durability of an initiative does not necessarily define the success of the initiative. Studies have neglected the question of continuity and what will happen when the initiators put down their efforts. In what way do initiators transfer their responsibility and is there a sense of problem ownership?This paper aims to conceptualize factors influencing the continuity of citizen initiatives and provide insight in the processes that take place when initiators stop their activities. Further, the study aims to identify who claims ownership of the issue the initiative focuses on. An inventory of citizen initiatives was made in the three northern provinces of the Netherlands, where rural areas experience depopulation. Questionnaires focusing on how initiatives think about their future, especially when the initiators stop, were sent to around 600 initiatives. The results will add to future research on success and failure of citizen initiatives, but also provide insights for citizen initiatives and ways local governments try to facilitate them.
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The transformation from the current energy system to a decentralized renewable energy system requires the transformation of communities into energy neutral or even energy producing communities. Increasingly, citizens become 'prosumers' and pool their resources to start a local energy initiative. In this paper we present an in-depth study of networks that recently developed, which challenge the established way of centralized decision-making on energy resources. Many local communities are eager to promote sustainable energy production, to use local financial resources for the local community and to employ democratic governance of energy production and supply. Furthermore, we study how these co-operations are linked to local, regional and national networks for community energy. We use both Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and Social Movement Theory (SMT) to investigate the initiatives, as this allows a dynamic analysis of collective strategies. We discuss the obduracy of the energy system and how this system is challenged by new connections between communities and global networks and by new types of energy providers that are rooted in social networks. Furthermore, we draw attention to the way community energy networks provide a social innovation while realizing a decentralized and decarbonized energy system.
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Study of new networks that are currently emerging in the local energy initiatives.
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Citizen participation in local renewable energy projects is often promoted as many suppose it to be a panacea for the difficulties that are involved in the energy transition process. Quite evidently, it is not; there is a wide variety of visions, ideologies and interests related to an ‘energy transition’. Such a variety is actually a precondition for a stakeholder participation process, as stakeholder participation only makes sense if there is ‘something at stake’. Conflicting viewpoints, interests and debates are the essence of participation. The success of stakeholder participation implies that these differences are acknowledged, and discussed, and that this has created mutual understanding among stakeholders. It does not necessarily create ‘acceptance’. Renewable energy projects often give rise to local conflict. The successful implementation of local renewable energy systems depends on the support of the local social fabric. While at one hand decisions to construct wind turbines in specific regions trigger local resistance, the opposite also occurs! Solar parks sometimes create a similar variation: Various communities try to prevent the construction of solar parks in their vicinity, while other communities proudly present their parks. Altogether, local renewable energy initiatives create a rather chaotic picture, if regarded from the perspective of government planning. However, if we regard the successes, it appears the top down initiatives are most successful in areas with a weak social fabric, like industrial areas, or rather recently reclaimed land. Deeply rooted communities, virtually only have successful renewable energy projects that are more or less bottom up initiatives. This paper will first sketch why participation is important, and present a categorisation of processes and procedures that could be applied. It also sketches a number of myths and paradoxes that might occur in participation processes. ‘Compensating’ individuals and/or communities to accept wind turbines or solar parks is not sufficient to gain ‘acceptance’. A basic feature of many debates on local renewable energy projects is about ‘fairness’. The implication is that decision-making is neither on pros and cons of various renewable energy technologies as such, nor on what citizens are obliged to accept, but on a fair distribution of costs and benefits. Such discussions on fairness cannot be short cut by referring to legal rules, scientific evidence, or to standard financial compensations. History plays a role as old feelings of being disadvantaged, both at individual and at group level, might re-emerge in such debates. The paper will provide an overview of various local controversies on renewable energy initiatives in the Netherlands. It will argue that an open citizen participation process can be organized to work towards fair decisions, and that citizens should not be addressed as greedy subjects, trying to optimise their own private interests, but as responsible persons.
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