Mainstreaming best practices in energy demand

It is becoming increasingly clear that we need an integrated approach to understanding and encouraging transitions towards a sustainable energy system. Current overall unsustainable ‘practices’ are locked into cultural, material, institutional and infrastructural settings. This limits the scope for individual choice and action. Even when actions are taken on individual or project level, they often remain stand-alone niche experiments and little further diffusion takes place. This paper addresses this problem by investigating how new more sustainable practices in the field of energy demand at the micro level can become mainstream and how energy demand side management projects can encourage this. We first discuss how a multilevel systems approach and practice theory may be fruitfully combined to address the problem of mainstreaming. Second, we analyse four empirical cases of energy demand side management. We explore efforts at diffusing these sustainable energy practices, the encountered challenges, employed solutions and achieved outcomes with the goal of learning about opportunities to mainstream best practices in the field of energy demand. The analysis reveals that the case that involved the most radical innovation faced the highest resistance to mainstreaming from the incumbent system. The more incremental initiatives were more successful at diffusing, but had rather modest outcomes in terms of environmental and efficiency gains. An important finding is that in order to shift everyday practices to a more sustainable direction, an understanding of possibilities to trigger changes in social norms is needed. When these changes are quite invasive, more time for negotiation and discussion might be needed before they become regarded as legitimate. Furthermore, connecting supply and demand (instead of merely addressing the demand side) can be crucial in mainstreaming sustainable energy practices. Although lessons learned from the cases do not offer clear-cut ‘do’s and don’ts’ for future efforts, they do highlight important issues for mainstreaming sustainable practices. These issues can sometimes be addressed within the scope of a single energy demand side project, but often policy has an important facilitating role to play in making sustainable energy practices legitimate and mainstream

Storytelling - SHAPE ENERGY facilitation guidelines for interdisciplinary and multi-stakeholder processes

Storytelling as a research and collaboration tool is grounded in several social science disciplines, including Anthropology and Sociology. The storytelling methodology that SHAPE ENERGY will use is developed and coordinated by our project partner Duneworks, and will facilitate productive working in several SHAPE ENERGY activities and within our own communication approaches. This report details the guidelines for facilitators of the 18 SHAPE ENERGY multi-stakeholder workshops and the four Horizon 2020 sandpits with H2020/FP7 project partners. However, these guidelines are also designed to enable wider use by others aiming to facilitate interdisciplinary and/or multi-stakeholder collaboration

Policies for capacity development

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Identification of Value Proposition and Development of Innovative Business Models for Demand Response Products and Services Enabled by the DR-BOB Solution

The work presented is the result of an ongoing European H2020 project entitled DR-BOB Demand Response in Blocks of Buildings (DR-BOB) that seeks to integrate existing technologies to create a scalable solution for Demand Response (DR) in blocks of buildings. In most EU countries, DR programs are currently limited to the industrial sector and to direct asset control. The DR-BOB solution extends applicability to the building sector, providing predictive building management in blocks of buildings, enabling facilities managers to respond to implicit and explicit DR schemes, and enabling the aggregation of the DR potential of many blocks of buildings for use in demand response markets. The solution consists of three main components: the Local Energy Manager (LEM), which adds intelligence and provides the capacity for predictive building management in blocks of buildings, a Consumer Portal (CP) to enable building managers and building occupants to interact with the system and be engaged in demand response operations, and a Decentralized Energy Management System (DEMS®, Siemens plc, Nottingham, England, UK), which enables the aggregation of the DR potential of many blocks of buildings, thus allowing participation in incentive-based demand response with or without an aggregator. The paper reports the key results around Business Modelling development for demand response products and services enabled by the DR-BOB solution. The scope is threefold: (1) illustrate how the functionality of the demand response solution can provide value proposition to underpin its exploitation by four specific customer segments, namely aggregators and three types of Owners of Blocks of Buildings in different market conditions, (2) explore key aspects of the Business Model from the point of view of a demand response solution provider, in particular around most the suitable revenue stream and key partnership, and (3) assess the importance of key variables such as market maturity, user engagement, and type of blocks of buildings as drivers to market penetration and profitability. The work presented is framed by the expected evolution of DR services in different market contexts and the different relationships between the main stakeholders involved in the DR value chain in different EU countries. The analysis also relies on the results of interviews conducted at the fours pilot sites of the DR-BOB project with key representatives of the management, operations, and marketing. These are used to better understand customer needs and sharpen the value proposition

DELIVERABLE: D4.1 IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGIES

This work is part of the DR BOB Project. The DR-BOB Collaborative Project (Grant Agreement No. 696114) is co-funded by the European Commission, Information Society and Media Directorate-General, under the Horizon 2020 Programme (H2020)

A social engagement Fast Track on Energy Communities-Key Lesson Learned from H2020 EU Projects

Energy communities organise collective and citizen-driven energy actions that will help pave the way for a clean energy transition, while moving citizens to the forefront. The energy market is rapidly transforming and so is the role of the consumer. Yesterday’s passive consumers become central actors in today’s energy markets. Today, as prosumers, citizens can benefit from their generation, consumption, and storage capabilities. Moreover, by supporting social engagement and citizen participation, energy communities can help provide flexibility to the electricity system through demand response, storage, and peer-to-peer energy exchange. Based on the collective debate from nine H2020 running projects (Renaissance, COMETS, Sender, eCREW, Lightness, ReDream, HESTIA, UP-STAIRS and NRG2peers), several challenges and key lessons learned can be identified for just social engagement. These challenges and lessons are relevant for the present and future development of EU energy communities

DELIVERABLE: D5.1 MONITORING AND VALIDATION STRATEGIES

This deliverable report will present the strategies developed for monitoring the case study demonstrations to be undertaken as part of WP4. The strategies presented will include both methods for quantitative validation, including data capture and relevant KPIs, and those catering for more qualitative evaluation using aspects such as contextual interviews, self-observations, and/or questionnaires.This work is part of the DR BOB Project. The DR-BOB Collaborative Project (Grant Agreement No. 696114) is co-funded by the European Commission, Information Society and Media Directorate-General, under the Horizon 2020 Programme (H2020)