SEG's researchers win the 2013 best paper award at the International Conference on Sustainable Transitions
The Sussex Energy Group is proud to announce that Dr Sabine Hielscher, Dr Adrian Smith and Mari Martiskainen were all co-authors on a paper which won the 2013 best paper award at the International Conference on Sustainable Transitions which took place last week in Zurich (http://www.ist13.ch/index_EN).
The winning paper was:
Gill Seyfang, Sabine Hielscher, Tom Hargreaves, Mari Martiskainen and Adrian Smith: ‘A Grassroots Sustainable Energy Niche? Reflections on community energy case studies’ (see extended abstract below).
Caetano Penna’s paper with Frank Geels (‘Climate change and the slow reorientation of the American car industry (1979-2018): An application and extension of the Dialectic Issue Life Cycle (DILC) model’) was among the five shortlisted papers and we unofficially heard came second.
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Extended Abstract No. 146
A Grassroots Sustainable Energy Niche? Reflections on community energy
case studies
Seyfang, G.,* Hielscher, S.**, Hargreaves, T.*, Martiskainen, M.** and Smith, A.**
*3S (Science, Society and Sustainability) Research Group, University of East Anglia, UK
** SPRU (Science and Technology Policy Research), University of Sussex, UK
The combined pressure of global climate change, threats to energy security and peak oil are driving a research agenda toward developing a radically more sustainable energy system (UKERC, 2009; Grin et al, 2010). The UK government’s Low Carbon Transition Plan presents a national strategy for climate and energy which includes reducing energy consumption through conservation and efficiency measures, and the development of low-carbon electricity generation systems (HM Government, 2009).
A key element of this plan is the role of households and communities, and the government’s aim to “create an environment where the innovation and ideas of communities [in response to climate change] can flourish” (ibid p.92).
Community energy projects are one example of this type of grassroots-led innovation, which aim to create more sustainable energy systems. They encompass a wide range of initiatives such as locally-owned renewable energy generation, community hall refurbishments, collective behaviour change programmes, and so on, and are claimed to bring additional public engagement benefits to top-down policy initiatives.
Community energy has therefore been proposed as a new policy tool to help achieve the transition to a low-carbon energy system, but little is known about the scope and potential of such community-led innovations to influence wider transitions in the energy system. To understand the dynamics of system transformation, we turn to theories of sociotechnical change which have examined the role of protected ‘niche’ spaces as seedbeds
of radical innovation. Niches are claimed to develop from clusters of sustainability innovations (projects), and in turn help new projects get established, and therefore diffuse the innovation more widely, potentially becoming robust enough to compete with – and influence or displace – existing, less sustainable systems (Geels 2005; Kemp et al, 1998; Raven et al, 2008).
Strategic Niche Management (SNM) is a governance approach to nurturing these niches as seedbeds of sustainable innovations, and sets out the conditions and processes for niches to become robust and influential (Schot et al. 1994, Kemp et al. 1998; Hoogma et al, 2001). While research within this field to date has focused on managed technological innovation in market contexts, a growing body of work on ‘grassroots innovations’ is examining bottom-up civil society-led initiatives for sustainability (Seyfang and Smith 2007). This work aims to better understand valuesdriven, community-based initiatives for sustainability, in order to support their growth and achieve wider influence. To this end, we examine the extent to which SNM can be
applied to this novel innovation context, in order to gain insight into how grassroots innovations in sustainable energy might be harnessed to support policy goals.
We present new empirical evidence from a study of the community energy sector (comprising many local projects) in the UK, and investigate the extent to which a community energy niche is evident. We draw on three main bodies of data: a set of 12 in-depth qualitative case studies of community energy projects; a review of resources available from networks and intermediary organisations representing the sector; and 15 in-depth interviews with key actors working at this level. We ask: to what extent is a community energy niche emerging, and at what stage of development is it?