Public Values and Community Energy: Lessons from the US and UK

Hoffman, Steven M.; Fudge, Shane; Pawlisch, Lissa; High-Pippert, Angela; Peters, Michael; Haskard, Joel

doi:10.3390/su5041747

Cited by 38 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…While this finding depends to an extent on the local economic structure, labour force and capacity to develop intermediate input supply industries over time [66], it has been widely observed and attributed to the lack of both local supply and sustained demand for the skills required for construction and operation of energy installations in rural areas [36,65,[67][68][69]] (see 4.2 below). Local sourcing was observed to be common in small-scale Scottish community facility projects [36] and Welsh hydro projects [17,62], but less prevalent for larger scale hydro [17], and neither practical nor strategic in medium-scale wind [36].…”

Section: Local Procurementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In these cases, based on the evidence reviewed here, project earnings would be spent on substantially less local private goods and services, to the detriment of overall local value added. Nevertheless, there is anecdotal evidence that CRE projects can indirectly provide a degree of public benefit merely by complementing household and municipal income, sustaining livelihoods in the face of decline of dominant local industries and, through enhancing overall economy purchasing power, making places more livable [17,58,74].…”

Section: Earnings Allocationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is also a lack of robust, systematic monitoring of impacts by the community organisations carrying out CRE projects [16]. This stems from "a tendency within the community sector to focus on 'getting on and doing' rather than on measuring"; a lack of human and financial resources; a lack of technical knowledge and skills; and the lack of "established methodological frameworks" [17]. Despite these challenges, the few impact evaluations that have been carried out demonstrate that evidence can enhance "the group's perception and sense of efficacy and agency", guide activities and serve to mobilise funding [18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Taking stock of the local impacts of community owned renewable energy: A review and research agenda

Berka

Creamer

2018

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews

198

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A growing literature suggests that community owned renewable energy (CRE) projects have the potential to deliver a range of environmental and local socio-economic benefits. There is relatively little empirical evidence to substantiate this, with few systematic efforts to assess social and environmental impacts or to understand the context in which given impacts arise. In this paper, we review and conceptualise the local impacts commonly cited in the literature and dissect the empirical evidence currently available to support their occurrence. Having assessed the quality of evidence and pinpointed knowledge gaps, we draw on methodological literature to identify approaches necessary to improve our understanding of the local impacts of CRE and explore their patterns of occurrence. We find a lack of robust survey and statistical evidence across all the seven impact categories identified. Of the impacts identified, 'empowerment' and 'access to affordable energy' are found to be the least studied. In addition, several impacts are associated only with specific types of community energy projects. We argue that the paucity of consistent evidence for direct impacts associated with the development processes and direct outcomes of projects suggests that the most substantial local impacts result from medium to long term indirect project outcomes and the investment of project revenues in the local community. As such, collective funding pools and negotiation processes around their distribution towards private versus public goods play a crucial role in determining transformative local impacts of CRE.

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Section: Local Procurementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Earnings Allocationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Taking stock of the local impacts of community owned renewable energy: A review and research agenda

Berka

Creamer

2018

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews

198

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“…From outside the RTP consortium there are further calls for municipal participation to underpin community generators (Hoffman et al, 2013;Julian, 2014;Platt et al, 2014); calls which are being answered. For example, the Core Cities network (a consortium of the ten largest British cities outside London) has signalled intent to establish electricity supply companies with the express aim of underpinning community generation (Core Cities, 2013).…”

Section: Addressing the Supply Market Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

Community energy and equity: The distributional implications of a transition to a decentralised electricity system

Johnson¹,

Hall²

2014

PPP

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This paper explores the equity implications of a transition to a decentralised energy system in the UK. We base our analysis on one of three idealised transition pathways developed by the EPSRC-funded Realising Transition Pathways (RTP) project. Each pathway is characterised by a different mix of technologies, ownership and governance of the energy transition, and stretches from 2010 to 2050. In this paper we focus on the 'Thousand Flowers' (TF) pathway, which stipulates a much greater role for civil society in the energy system. Here, civil society actors are instrumental in delivering 50 per cent of final electricity demand from decentralised, low-carbon sources by 2050. Such a radical and systemic transition will require both institutional as well as technological change. The systemic institutional transformation necessary to support wide-spread adoption of community/decentralised energy schemes and the potential distributional impacts have, however, received limited attention to date. To address this gap, we draw on collected outputs of the RTP consortium and extant literatures on community and decentralised energy to explore potential institutional barriers and distributional impacts of the TF pathway. We argue a transition to a TF future would require significant institutional changes to UK energy governance, new municipal and community business models, and new financial and organisational structures in energy ownership. Second, widespread adoption of distributed energy sources would undermine the viability of traditional large power plants; leading to the need for new forms of state support to maintain assets at transmission level. Finally, we contend that expanded community energy provision has the potential to reproduce, or even exacerbate, existing socio-economic and spatial inequalities.

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“…[13,19,30,58,[60][61][62]). For instance, Späth and Rohracher ([30], p. 103) describe that, in the cities of Graz and Freiburg, aligning and encouraging different types of actors was made possible through "remarkably stable visions of a sustainable energy future in the cities".…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Boundary Bridging Arrangements: A Boundary Work Approach to Local Energy Transitions

Köhrsen

2017

Sustainability

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Local energy transitions involve various types of actors (e.g., politicians, businesses, public administrators, and citizens) that differ in their objectives, values, problem-related perspectives, and professional jargons: these differences risk deterring the collaboration that is needed to pursue energy transitions as encompassing socio-technological transformations. Based on a boundary work-approach, this contribution studies the interplay of actors in these transitions. The approach suggests that boundary bridging arrangements (e.g., boundary objects, boundary settings, and boundary organizations) evolve in local energy transitions, facilitating communication across the boundaries between the various types of actors. In applying the boundary work approach to the energy transitions in two German cities, the article explores the potentials and limitations of this approach.

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Public Values and Community Energy: Lessons from the US and UK

Cited by 38 publications

References 16 publications

Taking stock of the local impacts of community owned renewable energy: A review and research agenda

Taking stock of the local impacts of community owned renewable energy: A review and research agenda

Community energy and equity: The distributional implications of a transition to a decentralised electricity system

Boundary Bridging Arrangements: A Boundary Work Approach to Local Energy Transitions

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