Policy Briefs & Booklets

ENCLUDE presents The Changemaker's Guide to the Energy Transition, a playbook that aims to take citizens step by step to design, implement and reflect on an initiative of their own related to the energy transition. This is the outcome of helping citizens develop their own community energy initiatives. The approaches used in the playbook are based on an online programme, called the ENCLUDE Academy, developed as a part of the research project called ENCLUDE, as well as methods that have been used with more than 1,500 Bachelor and Masters students in Europe. This playbook is for anyone looking to contribute to or already engaged in the energy transition. It is tailored for those interested in launching or already working on community projects related to energy and decarbonization or for civic organizations and local authorities who want to empower citizens to work together towards change.

Energy citizenship has so far been a missing piece of the energy transition puzzle. Energy citizenship pertains to citizen engagement and involvement in the energy transition and the rights and responsibilities of citizens to that end. Despite the European Energy Union’s vision to put citizens at the core of the transition, much remains to be done to ensure that the pathway towards carbon neutrality is inclusive and provides opportunities and benefits for all. This is a joint policy brief produced by four Horizon 2020 projects working on energy citizenship: DIALOGUES, ENCLUDE, EC2 and EnergyPROSPECTS. The four projects agree that the view on citizens’ roles in the European energy transition must be expanded beyond being consumers, prosumers and belonging to energy communities. Across the four projects, around 32,000 citizens have been involved in research and capacity-building around the concept of energy citizenship through interviews, surveys, workshops, case studies, co-creation activities, and educational and training programmes. In this policy brief, we translate citizens’ knowledge, perspectives, and experiences together with our analyses into concrete pathways and recommendations, for decision-makers, primarily at the EU-level but which may also be relevant for Member States as well as regional and local authorities. 
 

These project results have bee printed into cardboard posters and presented as an exhibition at the 'Energy Citizenship in the making' event on 5 March 2024. Event participants included academics, policymakers from the EU and Member States, and members of the civil society. Posters designed by Agata Smok (Th!nk E).

The overall vision of the Horizon 2020 project ENCLUDE is to help the EU fulfill its promise of a just and inclusive decarbonisation 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 case studies, the project aims to study energy citizenship from a group- centred sociological perspective, in order to identify the most important processes and factors affecting the emergence and consolidation of energy citizenship groups. The creation of case studies for Collective Energy Initiatives (CEIs) was a comprehensive process that used both desktop research and qualitative semi-structured interviews. In addition, we collected valuable insights through a survey conducted with members of selected initiatives from July to October 2022. Further enriching our understanding, we conducted interviews with various stakeholders involved in or connected to these initiatives. Our approach is based on two theoretical frameworks: the Energy Cultures Framework and the Socio-Ecological Systems Framework for Integrated Community Energy Systems. To analyse the obtained information, we used an adapted variant of the grounded theory. We categorised the cases based on the information gathered for each of the posed questions. This categorization involved an analysis of all cases collectively and a detailed examination of each case individually. The goal was to discern patterns and trends within the collected data. The results of our analysis are presented in this leaflet, designed by Agata Smok (Th!nk E).

How did different types of energy citizenship initiatives emerged in Europe? Our survey with 280 participants of such initiatives around Europe provided many insights on demographic, energy consumption, and energy behaviour aspects that shed light on how these initiatives were created, what is their current progress, and potential barriers and issues they have encountered. This booklet summarises 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.

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 analyse the obtained information, we used an adapted variant of the grounded theory. We 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. The initial results of our analysis are presented in the attached leaflet, designed by Agata Smok (Th!nk E).