Community Renewable Energy and Sustainable Transition Management: analysis of policy change and inst

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Community Renewable Energy and Sustainable
Transition Management analysis of policy change
and institutional infrastructure

• Gordon Walker
• Department of Geography
• Lancaster Environment Centre

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• ESRC funded Project
• Community Energy Initiatives embedding
  sustainable technologies at a local level
• Sustainable Technologies Programme
• Patrick Devine-Wright and Sue Hunter (De Montfort
  University)
• Bob Evans (Northumbria University)
• Helen Fay (Lancaster University)
• April 2004 - April 2006

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• Overall project aim is
• to evaluate the role of community initiatives
  in the implementation and embedding of
  sustainable energy technologies in the UK

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• Policy Context
• Methodology
• Programmes and Networks
• Key Questions
• Drivers and Motivations
• Conceptions of Community
• Sustainable Transition Management
• Niches and Community Renewable energy

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Policy Context

• Energy supply policy in UK for a long time
  dominated by centralised large-scale
  infrastructure development involving major public
  and private institutions
• Community and a new localism emerged within the
  rhetoric and profile of sustainable energy policy
  in late 90s
• Proactive setting up of national programmes to
  support, stimulate and enable development of
  community energy projects (2001/2 onwards)
• Parallel emergence of private sector and NGO
  driven initiatives in the form of programmes and
  networks

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• Every community should review its impact on the
  environment in terms of demands for energy, and
  the ways in which they can be met. Promoters of
  schemes should establish a dialogue with the
  local community at an early stage.
• (Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution,
  2000)

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• There is much more local generation, in part
  from medium to small local/community power plant,
  fuelled by locally grown biomass, from locally
  generated waste, from local wind sources, or
  possibly from local wave and tidal generators
• Involvement will give the community some degree
  of control over the scheme
• A financial return should be generated, both to
  the community and investors
• If successful, involvement in a community
  venture will provide a sense of satisfaction
• (Energy White Paper, Department of Trade and
  Industry, 2003)

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• Local planning authorities, regional
  stakeholders and Local Strategic Partnerships
  should foster community involvement in renewable
  energy projects and seek to promote knowledge of
  and greater acceptance by the public of
  prospective renewable energy developments that
  are appropriately located.
• (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, Planning
  Policy Statement 22, 2004)

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• A community focus in policy
• meso level intervention to promote and manage
  socio-technical change distinct from macro (big
  capital projects) and micro (household/individual
  action and behaviour change )
• builds into long standing arguments for smaller
  scale, distributed energy technology
• community implies associations of cooperation,
  participation, consensus within locally bounded
  networks, self-determination, ownership and local
  benefit

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Methodology

• Profiling of community energy programmes and
  networks
• Interviews with key people involved in setting
  up, overseeing, running programmes and networks
  (23 interviews)
• Compilation of database of renewable energy
  projects supported/funded by programmes and
  networks
• Case Studies of 6 renewable energy projects
• Wales and Northern England
• 2 wind, 2 biomass and district heating, 1 solar,
  1 ground source heat pump
• Stakeholder interviews (regional and local) and
  questionnaires of local people

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Programmes and Networks

• Community Programme or Network defined as
• includes community within its
  rationale/objectives
• ambitions extends beyond single projects and
  active in this respect
• involves promotion, support, capital or project
  development for renewable energy production or
  district heating both governmental and
  non-governmental
• 12 programmes identified in September 2004 at the
  national level

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• complex institutional structure, relations and
  organisational roles
• multiple government departments
• government agencies
• non profit public and public/private agencies
• charitable bodies
• cooperatives
• private sector

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GOVERNMENT FUNDING
SCOTT EXEC
DTI
DEFRA
COUN AGENCY
CARB TRUST
EST
BRE
CSE
HI ENT
MANAGEMENT
CLEAR SKIES
CRI
SCHRI
CAFÉ
COMM. ENERGY
EST PV
COMMUNITY PROGRAMMES
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• heterogeneous structures, scales and roles of
  programmes and networks
• national responsive capital funding programmes
  with some differentiation by technology (Clear
  Skies, Community Energy, EST PV, Scottish CHRI)
• sub-regional proactive support teams brokering
  partnerships and project (CRI - England)
• support through national networks of
  groups/individuals sharing information,
  expertise, best practice, experience (CAFÉ, REIC,
  Energy21, Solar Clubs)
• commonwealth of cooperatives (Energy4All)
• process of identifying land for wind farm
  development with financial return to community
  during operation (Powergen)

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• Approximately 500 projects involving renewable
  energy generation or district heating
  installation supported by these
  programmes/networks (as of Dec 2004)

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Numbers of Community Projects by Technology
Note Projects may involve more than one
technology
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Numbers of Community Projects supported by each
Programme or Network
Note a project maybe supported by more than one
programme or network
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of all community projects in each country of
the UK
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• Enormous diversity in projects
• scale and output (electricity, heat, local, grid)
• objectives and ambitions (narrow, broad,
  multiple)
• patterns of community involvement
• management and ownership structures

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• Enormous diversity in projects
• scale and output (electricity, heat, local, grid)
• objectives and ambitions (narrow, broad,
  multiple)
• patterns of community involvement
• management and ownership structures

owned by local people
managed by local people/groups
explains itself to the community
for a community building
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• An impressive profile of activity and innovation?
• but not all successful, material, lasting or
  achieving objectives
• substantial difficulties in establishing and
  evaluating what collectively has actually been
  achieved .and success can be measured in
  different ways

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Key Questions

• Why has the complex, differentiated and scaled
  institutional architecture developed in this way
  at this point in time?
• What does a community approach mean, how is the
  term being defined and deployed?
• Is the community approach providing a niche for
  socio-technical change?

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Drivers and Motivations

• Differentiated between programmes/interviewees,
  explicit and implicit
• Instrumental
• stimulation/support of market (state-aid rules)
• development of standards and technical skills
• gaining planning permission (for on shore wind
  farms)
• regeneration (rural) and social
  inclusion/cohesion
• Normative/ethical
• principles of localism (bringing people
  together)
• ownership and cooperative models
• ethical investment
• education about energy (information deficit)
• Rhetorical
• community as good politics

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• Well the fundamental motivation from the
  Executives side is to stimulate the market in
  renewables, (SCHRI)
• First of all its bringing the community
  together, and I think anything that brings the
  community closer together is a good thing
  (Energy4All)
• The main aim of the programme was to produce
  standards and certify contractors, increase
  awareness and uptake of the technologies (Clear
  Skies)
• There was a growing backlash against
  specifically large scale wind farms and they
  recognised that some work on hearts and minds was
  needed and the best way of doing that work was
  through working at a community level (SCHRI)
• you know, root and branch, change the way we
  approach energy and as a result, the way we live
  our lives and thats not going to happen as a
  result of a marketing campaign, thats going to
  happen only if we embed the importance, the
  methods of how to approach it, and approaches to
  action within the community, and hence the
  importance of community action (CAFÉ)

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ENERGY POLICY Climate Change/RE targets Market
needs Skills needs Planning Obstacles
RURAL REGENERATION Diversification Cohesion
SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES LA21, resilience,
participation
COMMUNITY ENERGY DRIVERS
NGO/GRASSROOTS principles, experience,
demonstration
INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE
ETHICAL INVESTMENT AND CSR
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• Community RE appeared in government policy as a
  consequence of multiple policy and grassroots
  discourses connecting around a community label
• Top-down energy (and rural) policy problems of
  the late 1990s, connected within longer standing
  bottom-up process-orientated principles and
  practice
• Institutional architecture reflects
• plurality of discourses, interests actors
• plurality of technologies and scales of
  deployment
• incremental, chaotic evolution rather than grand
  plan, in part because of this plurality

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Meanings of Community

• As embedded within objectives and operation of
  programmes/networks
• Community as not for profit organisation (legal
  rationale)
• Community as public opinion (political rationale)
• Community as investors and entrepreneurs (market
  rationale)
• Community as effective/capable (collectivist
  rationale)
• Community as aerosol (marketing rationale)
• Community as a group of buildings (physical
  rationale)

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• the programme is called community energy,
  because obviously it is about linking different
  buildings and different constituent partners
  within the community together in one heating
  system
• (Community Energy)
• Q How has community been defined?
• We are having to make that up as we go along.
  As far as the Oxfordshire project is concerned,
  we will probably define it as people living
  between Oxford, Swindon and perhaps extending it
  slightly into Wiltshire as well (Energy4All)
• BRE have measured community roughly using
  the level of consultation process, who benefits
  from the project and how much support within the
  community there is for the project. There is no
  set definition of community within the programme
  they have taken each case on its merits, without
  using a points system, just using rules of thumb.
  The only restriction is that they have to be
  not-for-profit and be a legal entity (Clear
  Skies)

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• its actually very difficult to define
  community, what is a community project, because I
  think it represents a spectrum, and I get
  frustrated when, particularly on the renewable
  energy side, people say a community project is
  one that, where the wind turbine is owned by the
  community, and actually I think thats such a
  small percentage, and it also devalues the whole
  wealth of community projects, community
  involvement, activities that arent actually
  around projects where the community owns
  somethingmight be just that the community have
  been actively involved, and I think that
  approaches to community participation have to
  recognise that wide spectrum
• (CAFÉ)

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• Community renewable energy is not one thing or
  one category
• A space with malleable and indistinct
  boundaries which is given meaning, filled and
  experimented with by different actors to
  different strategic and pragmatic ends

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Sustainable Transition Management

• Theories and model of socio-technical change
  developed in Netherlands (Rip, Geels, Kemp and
  others)
• Technologies seen as embedded within particular
  economic, social, cultural and institutional
  structures and systems of belief and in turn
  shaping these
• Multi-level model

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Landscape changing background and structures of
economy, political culture, worldviews,
demography, natural environment, social
expectations
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Landscape changing background and structures of
economy, political culture, worldviews,
demography, natural environment, social
expectations
Regime the complex of scientific knowledges,
engineering practices, production processes,
skills, procedures, ways of thinking and defining
problems embedded within institutions and
infrastructures technology lock in and
barriers to change
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Landscape changing background and structures of
economy, political culture, worldviews,
demography, natural environment, social
expectations
Regime the complex of scientific knowledges,
engineering practices, production processes,
skills, procedures, ways of thinking and defining
problems embedded within institutions and
infrastructures technology lock in and
barriers to change
Niches protected spaces for the development and
use of promising new technologies by means of
experimentation
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Geels 2004
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• How do transitions in regimes happen?
• Change happens through process of co-evolution
  and mutual adaptation of technology and the
  system in which it is produced and used
• For those seeking a shift to a more sustainable
  technological regime the task is no longer to
  control or promote a single technology but to
  change an integrated system of technologies and
  social practices (Kemp et al 1998)
• One way advocated for governments to manage a
  transition process to a different regime is
  through strategic niche management (SNM)

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• Strategic niche management (Kemp et al 1998)
• A concentrated effort to develop protected
  spaces for applications of a new technology
• Use of technology within a niche enables
• articulation of changes in technology, symbolic
  meanings and institutional framework that are
  needed for success
• learning about feasibility, gains and social
  desirability
• Stimulation of further development, cost
  efficiencies, skills, changes in social
  organization for wider diffusion
• building of a constituency behind a technology

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• SNM involves
• Choice of an appropriate setting or space in
  which the technology is to be used and societal
  experimentation is to take place
• Choice of policies e.g. setting long term goals,
  creation of an actor network, coordination of
  actions and strategies, use of taxes/subsidies,
  standard setting
• Niche management is a collective endeavour
  NGOS and industry can run niche projects
• Public policy makers are enabling actors and
  catalysts
• SNM is a stepping stone which facilitates rather
  than forges change

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• Can recent public policy for community
  renewables be characterised as (implicit)
  strategic niche management

Grassroots niches formed by alternative
technology activists
Transition in the energy supply regime
Niches flexibly supported and nurtured by public
policy window opportunity
Demonstration projects networks fund raising
technology diversity
Subsidies actor network formation support
services information sharing experimentation
with finance, project management, social
arrangements
Renewable, distributed, localised, embedded
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• Many of suggested features and tools of SNM are
  evident
• protected spaces
• use of varied policy tools
• actor networks collective endeavour
• experimentation, innovation and flexibility
  government as enabling and modulating
• Community renewable energy as a niche
  setting/space has useful qualities
• allows direct, unproblematic public subsidy
• embedded in localities and economies
• embodies multiple technologies and applications
• cultural positives

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• But ..
• Where is the connection to regime transition?
• Is this essentially about developing a niche for
  renewable energy for rural communities? (and
  realising local rather than aggregate benefits?)
• Is the infrastructure too chaotic, uncoordinated
  and fragile for effective niche management?
• Are there insufficient learning processes at
  second order or higher levels?
• Is it, for some at least, more about community
  than about energy technology?