Learning from collective energy initiatives - Initial results from the analysis of 68 case studies

The overall vision of the Horizon 2020 project Energy Citizens for Inclusive Decarbonization (ENCLUDE) is to help the EU fulfill its promise of just and inclusive decarbonization 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. By establishing a structured and well-documented pool of relevant international case studies, the project aims to study energy citizenship from a group-centered sociological perspective, in order to identify the most important processes and factors affecting the emergence and consolidation of energy citizenship groups.

The data collection to create the case studies pool of Collective Energy Initiatives (CEIs) was a mixture of desktop research and qualitative semi-structured interviews. Information was gathered for a set of questions concerning the size, age, and location of the initiative, the type of participation and governance, the resources, the main activities, goals, and impacts, among others. Our approach is based on two theoretical frameworks: the Energy Cultures Framework and the Socio-Ecological Systems Framework for Integrated Community Energy Systems.

First, information was derived from public sources, such as websites of the cases, study reports, business reports, etc. Then, interviews with a case representative were conducted, when possible, to deepen and supplement the information. To analyze the obtained information, we used an adapted variant of the grounded theory. WP3 identified categories into which the cases can be split according to the information we gathered for each of the asked questions, by looking both at all cases as a whole and at the details of each case separately, in order to identify patterns.

Call for Action

Our work is certainly not stopping just yet. We have created a survey for the members and participants of the CEIs, so they could tell us more about their relationship with energy. If you are a participant in one of our case studies, and you are reading this, please answer the survey that a case study representative shared with you. And... we will keep you posted with more exciting findings!

The initial results of our analysis are presented in the leaflet that can be found in the Deliverables section.