Uncovering Motivations and Barriers for Collective Energy Initiatives
Date: October 2023
Authors: Malgorzata (Gosia) Matowska, Michael Brenner-Fliesser, Stephan Schwarzinger
Design and illustrations: Agata Smok
How did different types of energy citizenship initiatives emerge in Europe? Our survey with 280 participants of such initiatives around Europe provided many insights on demographic, energy consumption, and energy behavior aspects that shed light on how these initiatives were created, what is their current progress, and the potential barriers and issues they have encountered. This booklet summarizes some of the most important findings in a simple and generally understandable form. This aims at helping representatives of initiatives to better understand the characteristics and needs of their members.
Description
The overall vision of the Horizon 2020 project Energy Citizens for Inclusive Decarbonization (ENCLUDE) is to help the EU fulfill its promise of a just and inclusive decarbonization pathway through sharing and co-creating new knowledge and practices that maximize the number and diversity of citizens who are willing and able to contribute to the energy transition.
In the transformation of the energy system, citizens are becoming increasingly important as engaged, involved, and shaping participants. This role of participatory energy consumers is reflected in the term "energy citizen". ENCLUDE aims to share new knowledge and motivate the broadest possible population to contribute to the energy transition.
This transdisciplinary project will create a typology of the energy citizenship concept for diverse communities of citizens by investigating on-the-ground case studies of existing decarbonization activities. For the first time, insights about who is affected by energy citizenship and how this concept might affect decarbonization pathways will be incorporated into agent-based models and integrated assessment models. The research aims to therefore operationalize the energy citizenship concept at multiple scales of policy and decision making.
Through the creation of the ENCLUDE Academy for Energy Citizen Leadership, new knowledge about energy citizenship, opportunities for the energy transition, along with strategies for collaborative decision making and joint problem framing will be shared with citizens and NGOs across the EU. The aim is to help mobilize actions for decarbonization, including communities that normally do not or are not able to participate in these civic processes.
Participation spectrum: Austria, Belgium, France, Greece, Ireland, Netherlands, Romania, Switzerland, United Kingdom, North Macedonia, Canada
Start Year: 2021
End Year: 2024
