With the effects of climate change linked to the use of fossil fuels, as well as the prospect of their eventual depletion, becoming more noticeable, political establishment and society appear ready to switch towards using renewable energy. Solar power and wind power are considered to be the most significant source of global low-carbon energy supply. Wind energy continues to expand as it becomes cheaper and more technologically advanced. Yet, despite these expectations and developments, fossil fuels still comprise nine-tenths of the global commercial energy supply. In this article, the history, technology, and politics involved in the production and barriers to acceptance of wind energy will be explored. The central question is why, despite the problems associated with the use of fossil fuels, carbon dependency has not yet given way to the more ecologically benign forms of energy. Having briefly surveyed some literature on the role of political and corporate stakeholders, as well as theories relating to sociological and psychological factors responsible for the grassroots’ resistance (“not in my backyard” or NIMBYs) to renewable energy, the findings indicate that motivation for opposition to wind power varies. While the grassroots resistance is often fueled by the mistrust of the government, the governments’ reason for resisting renewable energy can be explained by their history of a close relationship with the industrial partners. This article develops an argument that understanding of various motivations for resistance at different stakeholder levels opens up space for better strategies for a successful energy transition. https://doi.org/10.30560/sdr.v1n1p11 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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There is an ongoing transition towards renewable energy sources in order to combat climate change. National power grids are suffering due to the rapid introduction of new energy sources and have other disadvantages. Local Energy Systems (LESs) are a beneficial example of an off-grid energy systems that can aid the energy transition. LESs are community driven and require participating and steering members. This can be achieved through empowering end-users to become active participants or steerers. End-users can be empowered to become an active participant through engagement with energy management activities. This does not work for empowering to steer, which begs the question, how to empower end-users or participants to become steerers in Local Energy Systems. Through a literature review this study explores the importance of establishing a group containing steerers with diverse skills, strong leadership, and engagement with the environment and community. Additionally, this study identifies the strategy that empowers end-users to steer. Which is training technological and managemental skills; and training capabilities in establishing relations with local participants and intermediary organisations. To apply these findings more precisely a secondary analysis is conducted on a survey with 599 participants. The original study researched willingness to participate in LESs, however the secondary analysis establishes three important factors to predict willingness to steer. These are energy independence, community trust, and community resistance. Additionally, men with a high level of education are most willing to become steerers per default, thus different demographics generally require more empowerment.
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Het is misschien wel het grootste vraagstuk van onze eeuw: hoe gaan we om met klimaatverandering? Floris Bogaard weet in ieder geval dat in Nederland de wadi –een wateropnemende en -zuiverende ‘greppel’ in stedelijk gebied – een groot verschil maakt. Hij reist het land door en onderzoekt samen met studenten, bewoners, gemeenten, waterschappen en bedrijven hoe ze dat verschil nog groterkunnen maken.
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The natural environment is dependent on water to provide society with many essential benefits or “ecosystemservices” (e.g. drinking water, biodiversity, food production, recreation, carbon sequestration). A number of EUdirectives aim to protect and improve the delivery of these services. However, successful implementation andintegration of the different directives at a local level is a major shared challenge in the North Sea Region.Understanding how this can be achieved is fundamental to delivering long-term sustainable ecosystem-basedmanagement strategies for the North Sea Region and the focus for the WaterCoG project.The project will demonstrate through the adoption of new participatory, ecosystem service based approachesthat implementation and integration of different water management frameworks can be achieved at the sametime as providing additional social, economic and environmental benefits not currently being realised.A strong transnational component will identify and incorporate common, transferable elements of differentapproaches into an up-scaling toolbox that will extend the impact of the project and build capacity for deliveringimproved sustainable management strategies for North Sea Region ecosystems.The projects’ output aims for a change in working practice that will improve the integration between top-downimplementation of European and national directives and bottom-up, participatory developed solutions forimproving the quality and sustainable management strategies of North Sea Region ecosystems.
