Local impact of community renewable energy:A case study of an Orcadian community-led wind scheme

Local benefits of community renewable energy (CRE) –ranging from an increase in social cohesion, jobs, services, knowledge and skills - are widely assumed in academia and among policy makers. However, there are both a lack of evidence on these impacts and a lack of formal impact assessment methodologies to assess them. This research explores change mapping, an impact assessment methodology, to contribute to evaluative frameworks for assessment of the effects of CRE projects on their host communities. With this methodology, the local impacts of a 900 kW community wind project on the Scottish island Shapinsay are assessed, using an exploratory survey, interviews, and two focus group sessions. When it comes to the local impacts, the biggest changes residents experience are either direct or indirect effects of the RE revenues. Modest but ostensible effects are visible on local economic development, social cohesion, and knowledge and skill development. From the case study can be concluded that community-ownership of energy technologies can indeed be empowering, but also creates vulnerability. Stable energy policies and support during the operational phase are needed to keep up the stream of RE income that functions as a source of independent income

‘Luctor et emergo’, how a community energy initiative survived the changing policy and technology landscape of the Dutch energy system?

As the Dutch policy of public participation in renewable energy projects takes momentum, lessons from Zeeuwind -a successful energy cooperative-can help improve resilience of the emerging energy cooperatives. Our results are based on thirty-five-year data from newspapers, resulting in a database of 584 news articles. We conclude that the Dutch policies for small-scale energy initiatives have not been consistent and alignment of policies between different levels of governance was missing. Despite these challenges, Zeeuwind achieved economic resilience, which was made possible through multiple factors, unique among them are: 1) Zeeuwind’s origin in the environmental NGO at the provincial level, which provided it with the necessary knowledge and network for a strong start. 2) The memberships of municipalities. 3) The focus on the level of the province to site new projects. 4) A contract of ten years with the energy incumbent. 5) The strategic decision to expand the technological portfolio. 6) Expansion of business through new partnerships and joint ventures. For scaling of Dutch energy cooperatives and improving their resilience, we recommend strengthening institutional structures that facilitate local cooperatives to participate in large renewable energy projects by building their organisational capacity via trainings and network building, legitimacy creation from political incumbents, and increased collaboration with energy incumbents

Local energy innovators:Collective experimentation for energy transition

Citizens are increasingly taking control of their energy provision and form energy collectives such as Grunneger Power or BrummenEnergie. By times, they leave the beaten legal, social and technical paths and find innovative solutions. This dissertation investigates the value of these innovations for the Dutch energy transition and makes recommendations to enhance the activities of innovating citizen collectives. Central to the investigated collective innovation processes are both the social and the material aspect of innovation, because the focus is on the interaction between the collectives and the energy system. The third aspect I focused on is regulation, because it delimits the institutional space for innovation and thus largely determines the playing field within which innovations are developed and must function. I looked at the mutual dynamics of these three aspects within the current cooperative movement, but also at the time of electrification. Even then, the Netherlands already had energy cooperatives. The main conclusions from this research are three roles that energy collectives can play in the development and embedding of energy innovations: 1) making new technologies more widely accessible, 2) creating locally and supra locally applicable learning experiences, and 3) acting as a local antenna that picks up context-related opportunities and values. The most feasible and most successful turned out to be characterized by sufficiently supportive policy, cooperation with actors with similar or complementary interests, proper assessment of what could be done by the initiative itself and what could better be outsourced

Participatory Experimentation with Energy Law:Digging in a ‘Regulatory Sandbox’ for Local Energy Initiatives in the Netherlands

To facilitate energy transition, regulators have devised ‘regulatory sandboxes’ to create a participatory experimentation environment for exploring revision of energy law in several countries. These sandboxes allow for a two-way regulatory dialogue between an experimenter and an approachable regulator to innovate regulation and enable new socio-technical arrangements. However, these experiments do not take place in a vacuum but need to be formulated and implemented in a multi-actor, polycentric decision-making system through collaboration with the regulator but also energy sector incumbents, such as the distribution system operator. Therefore, we are exploring new roles and power division changes in the energy sector as a result of such a regulatory sandbox. We researched the Dutch executive order ‘experiments decentralized, sustainable electricity production’ (EDSEP) that invites homeowners’ associations and energy cooperatives to propose projects that are prohibited by extant regulation. Local experimenters can, for instance, organise peer-to-peer supply and determine their own tariffs for energy transport in order to localize, democratize, and decentralize energy provision. Theoretically, we rely on Ostrom’s concept of polycentricity to study the dynamics between actors that are involved in and engaging with the participatory experiments. Empirically, we examine four approved EDSEP experiments through interviews and document analysis. Our conclusions focus on the potential and limitations of bottom-up, participatory innovation in a polycentric system. The most important lessons are that a more holistic approach to experimentation, inter-actor alignment, providing more incentives, and expert and financial support would benefit bottom-up participatory innovation

From kilowatts to cents: Financial inclusion of citizens through Dutch community energy business model configurations

Community energy initiatives (CEIs) emphasize citizen empowerment, equitable distribution of energy transitioncosts and benefits, and the importance of local knowledge. While CEI goals align with energy justice principles,they have been criticized for not fully incorporating distributive justice, particularly the distribution of thebenefits of a sustainable energy transition. Therefore, they may potentially perpetuate income inequalities. Thereare insufficient studies to conclusively determine whether CEIs perpetuate or address income inequalities.Moreover, the integration of transition studies, energy justice and business model literature is lacking, hinderingeffective analysis of CEI configurations that address income inequalities. This paper aims to connect the sustainability, energy justice and business model literature by dissecting the business model configurations of CEIsand assessing the inclusiveness of these components. To do so, we develop and employ an adapted businessmodel canvas that incorporates societal and environmental considerations in the value proposition, value creation and delivery and value capture. The canvas is used to determine whether sustainability and energy justiceconsiderations, particularly distributive justice principles, are embedded in the CEI business models. Theresearch is focused on the Netherlands, a country with a high number of CEIs. However, the study may yieldinsights relevant to other countries and CEIs, informing the integration of principles for societal inclusion in theirown contexts. We utilize a mixed-method approach, including interviews, desk research and surveys, to ensurerobust analysis through data triangulation. The study finds that there are elements of CEI business model configurations that are aligned with energy justice principles. However, models specifically targeting and aligningwith minimum income social groups are rare

Being a Better Neighbor:A Value-Based Perspective on Negotiating Acceptability of Locally-Owned Wind Projects

We pose that instead of problematizing negative attitudes of local stakeholders, such as citizens and NGOs, wind energy implementers should be more focused on scrutinizing the acceptability of their projects. The emphasis in this study is on the potential for representation of local stakeholders’ values in the project design, including amongst others business model and placement. Informed by value sensitive design literature, we analyzed two contrasting, locally-owned wind projects in the Dutch province of Groningen: the implementation of mini-turbines in a national landscape and a large-scale multi MW wind project in an industrialized area close to a World Heritage nature reserve. The study analyses how the respective farmer-developers and other local stakeholders attempted to resolve or ameliorate inter-and intra-value conflicts regarding livability, economy, landscape, and nature. The value conflicts turned out to be fruitful to identifying key issues and creating more widely shared value conceptualizations and design priorities. Hence, from this study it can be concluded that value conflict can be productive if carefully unpacked and managed. Uneven power distribution among stakeholders in the planning process, overcoming incommensurability of perspectives, and creating intersubjectivity remain challenges

New pathways for community energy and storage

Worldwide, the energy landscape is changing [...

How Local Energy Initiatives Develop Technological Innovations:Growing an Actor Network

Local energy initiatives are of growing interest to studies of grassroots innovation for sustainability. Some of these initiatives have developed novel technological solutions to fulfil local demand for renewable energy. However, whereas the upscaling and diffusion of grassroots innovations has been extensively discussed in the literature, their emergence has received very little attention so far. We will therefore focus on how energy initiatives can develop technological innovations by bringing together local actors and creating a fit to local circumstances. Grounded in actor network theory (ANT) and structured by concepts from Callon's sociology of translation, we studied two technologically innovative projects of a Dutch energy initiative. Through document analysis and interviews, we researched how these initiatives developed their innovations by forming networks of social, material, and discursive elements. We found that the outcomes of the innovation processes are very dependent on the networking capacities of the energy initiatives, as well as how well they fit with external circumstances and opportunities. The paper concludes with five lessons for grassroots technological innovation: form links with the local, extensively scrutinize plans, create tangible proof of alignments, position the project as beneficial to as many actors as possible, and adjust the level of ambition to the strength of the actor network

Exploring Institutional and Socio-Economic Settings for the Development of Energy Communities in Europe

Energy communities (ECs), intended as collective action initiatives in the energy field involving citizens’ participation, have been gaining relevance for the past decades as an alternative way to organize the energy chain to challenge the incumbent system. With Europe’s recently adopted Clean Energy Package, ECs found a formal recognition by the European Union as potential actors of the transition of the energy system towards a wider and more decentralized use of renewable sources. Although the potential role of ECs in the transition is therefore hardly questionable, a thorough comprehension of the enabling factors that might foster their diffusion and scaling up is still lacking. Through a comparative analysis of the evolutionary trajectories in six EU countries regarding their energy systems, their regulatory frameworks and their historical evolution of ECs, namely through the example of cooperative models, this paper aims at providing some preliminary evidence about the factors and dynamics that seem to have played, and may play, a role in hampering or facilitating EC model diffusion. Attention is therefore specifically paid to three dimensions of analysis referring to: the energy mix and market structure; the institutional and policy landscape; the wider social attitudes towards environmental issues and cooperation among citizens. In addition to providing a wide comparison of different EU countries, the paper shows that the historical evolution pathways have to be carefully taken into account to understand what might trigger ECs exploitation in the EU.This research has received funding from the H2020 project COMETS—Collective Action Models for Energy Transition and Social Innovation (GA 837722