Power to empowerment : a case study on how local policy can stimulate local energy initiatives to contribute to the energy transition

Abstract

Climate change can be described as world’s biggest problem nowadays. Citizens are acting and organizing themselves in so-called local energy initiatives; organisations that help contributing to the energy transition, because of their decentralized and sustainable ambitions. Local policy makers are the most important in support of their development. In the case of Rotterdam, the local energy community is still developing and local policy needs a clear view of the energy initiatives in order to stimulate this development. This leads to the following main research question: How can local policy motivate energy initiatives to contribute to the energy transition in the community of Rotterdam? With the Q-methodology three different perspectives were found, that indicate there are three different kinds of energy initiatives in Rotterdam: 1) the typical energy initiative, 2) the business-orientated energy initiative and 3) the fluid energy initiative. To motivate the development of local energy initiatives, local policy should pay attention to three parts. First, to motivate more citizens to organize themselves in energy initiatives, the promoting role of the municipality should be increased with promotional activities, like raising awareness under citizens. Second, to motivate energy initiatives to remain existing on the long-term and contribute to the energy transition, the municipality should provide supporting policy instruments, such as a direct contact or coaching sessions. Third, to create self-sustaining organisations that become independent of policy support, policy should strengthen the network, for example with cooperation with intermediary organisations. To adopt this research to other communities, it is important to consider the assumptions of the city Rotterdam, which are the intrinsic motivation and entrepreneurial mind-set under citizens.