The many local initiatives everywhere in Europe support the hypothesis that civil society and grassroot social movements, in particular, are important carriers of sustainability transitions. Numerous local initiatives focusing on climate change/sustainable development have developed in the aftermath of the Rio conference, and they are still developing, such as those devoted to energy in the UK. Throughout Europe, local initiatives in neighbourhoods, villages and cities have independently adopted the adage ‘think globally, act locally’. But the dynamics of change went beyond local authorities. In Europe, the latter change clearly reflects the importance and significance of chapter 28 of Agenda 21, which states that local authorities ‘play a pivotal role in educating, mobilizing and responding to the public to promote sustainable development’. Twenty years after the Rio conference on sustainable development, two things have changed dramatically: climate change has replaced sustainable development as the Grand Societal Challenge, and bottom-up innovation dynamics have developed in response to top-down failure. The local initiatives will develop as niches inside the dominant central generating station electricity system and will add to the hybridisation of its products and services. The conclusion is that local electricity initiatives can be considered a seedbed of innovation but with no potential to develop dominance in the electricity supply. In a final step, the paper analyses the innovative capacity of the local energy initiatives. Theoretically, the paper provides an institutionally oriented classification of local electricity initiatives, based on coordination, technology and performance.
#Power to the people quest drivers#
Empirically, the paper analyses the causes and manifestations of local community initiatives throughout Europe and especially in the Netherlands, to discover the drivers and foci of the initiatives. The questions are answered empirically and theoretically. We applied desk research and reviewed secondary literature. The questions the paper raises are as follows: can local energy initiatives be considered seedbeds of innovation? If so, how can such initiatives lead to innovations in the energy supply? Methods Local energy communities are a clear manifestation of this development. Two decades after the launch of Local Agenda 21 in Rio de Janeiro, we have witnessed the emergence and development of local initiatives in sustainable development.
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