Community Energy in the Eastern Baltic Sea Region: From Standstill to First Steps

Ruggiero, Salvatore L.; Busch, Henner; Isakovic, Aljosa; Hansen, Teis

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-84440-0_3

Cited by 5 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…In comparison to countries such as Germany and Denmark, where community energy projects are much more prevalent (Ruggiero et al 2021b), Sweden does not provide a policy framework that is conducive to these kinds of projects. Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that some community energy projects in Sweden do not have the traditional setup of grassroot initiatives but instead are a product of different (state) actor collaboration with local inhabitants (Ruggiero et al 2021a).…”

Section: Kalmar Swedenmentioning

confidence: 97%

The Rise and Fall of Energy Democracy: 5 Cases of Collaborative Governance in Energy Systems

Berthod

Blanchet

Busch

et al. 2022

Environmental Management

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A wide range of actors are seeking to democratize energy systems. In the collaborative governance process of energy system transitions to net zero, however, many energy democracy concepts are watered down or abandoned entirely. Using five renewable energy case studies, we first explore the diversity of energy democratizing system challengers and bottom-up actors. Secondly, we analyze the role of conflict and challenges arising from the subsequent collaborative governance process and identify what appear to be blind spots in the CG literature. Our case studies on Berlin (GER), Jena (GER), Kalmar (SWE), Minneapolis (US) and Southeast England (UK) include different types of policy processes and actors. They suggest that actors championing energy democracy principles play an important role in opening participation in the early stages of collaborative energy transition governance. As collaborative governance progresses, participation tends to be increasingly restricted. We conclude that collaborative processes by themselves are insufficient in maintaining energy democracy principles in the energy transition. These require institutional embedding of participative facilitation and consensus building. The Kalmar case study as our only successful example of energy democracy suggests that a more intermediated and service-oriented approach to energy provision can create a business case for democratizing energy provision through collaborative governance.

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Section: Kalmar Swedenmentioning

confidence: 97%

The Rise and Fall of Energy Democracy: 5 Cases of Collaborative Governance in Energy Systems

Berthod

Blanchet

Busch

et al. 2022

Environmental Management

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“…Mey and Diesendorf (2018) link the remarkable growth in Denmark's RE sector to the government's vision of establishing the country as a "Green Winner Nation" around 2008. A beneficial policy mix and cultural characteristics have ensured that Denmark has become a spearheading country in developing CE (Ruggiero et al 2021b). Stimulating policies included subsidies, purchase obligations and feed-in-tariffs .…”

Section: Danish Energy Islandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Denmark is one of the pioneering countries when it comes to CE and can look back at a long history of such projects. Historically, the conditions for CE projects have been beneficial for decades (Gorroño-Albizu et al 2019;Ruggiero et al 2021a;2021b). A particular development in Denmark are the community-centred energy transitions on the three "Energy Islands": Bornholm, Samsø and AErø.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Safe havens for energy democracy? Analysing the low-carbon transitions of Danish energy islands

2023

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Denmark has long been known as a pioneer in renewable energy technology development. Apart from technological leadership, Denmark has also been the home to many community-based renewable energy initiatives. Citizen involvement in local energy projects has been key to increasing and maintaining acceptance to wind, solar and biomass. Three Danish islands (Bornholm, Samsø and Ærø) have been particularly active in promoting renewables. All three have claimed the title “energy island” and two of them have established specific institutions to promote further RE projects. In this article, we investigate community energy projects on two of the islands (Samsø and Ærø) through an Energy Democracy lens. The purpose of this investigation is to understand how the development on these islands relate to the concept of Energy Democracy: we outline how democratic processes and institutions shape the development of the local infrastructure and how this development, in turn, shaped local democracy. We found that many of the features of Energy Democracy were present in the two cases. Our research highlights a number of shortcomings of the concept of energy democracy, most importantly, a certain disregard for questions of energy justice and a blindness towards questions of scale.

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“…Our first contribution is conceptual and focused on the diverging definitions of citizen energy action. The conceptualisations of citizen energy action build on different emphases with theoretical, jurisdictional and pragmatic connotations [9,[12][13][14]32] that are often connected to normative claims for citizen action in the energy system. Moreover, the complexity is often increased by variations in geospatial, material and organizational aspects of energy communities [34,36,46] that lead to locally situated analysis.…”

Section: Institutional Objectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the European Union, the Clean Energy Package with revised directives has created a framework for the member states to provide stronger legislative support for citizen engagement in community-level energy actions [10,11]. These regulatory reforms are geared towards transforming the operational conditions for active, efficient and inclusive citizen-led energy communities to emerge in diverse contexts [12][13][14]. More specifically, the market access rules and the information supporting the distributed energy producers have been improved [10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Citizen energy lost in sustainability transitions: Knowledge co-production in a complex governance context

Lukkarinen

Salo

Faehnle

et al. 2023

Energy Research & Social Science

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Community Energy in the Eastern Baltic Sea Region: From Standstill to First Steps

Cited by 5 publications

References 37 publications

The Rise and Fall of Energy Democracy: 5 Cases of Collaborative Governance in Energy Systems

The Rise and Fall of Energy Democracy: 5 Cases of Collaborative Governance in Energy Systems

Safe havens for energy democracy? Analysing the low-carbon transitions of Danish energy islands

Citizen energy lost in sustainability transitions: Knowledge co-production in a complex governance context

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