Community engagement aims to include citizens and civil society organizations in decision-making processes in order to achieve long-term and sustainable results and processes around the clean energy transition. Due to their disconnection from the mainland, islands represent one of the most challenging contexts to work with.
Local, national and EU governments all acknowledge that citizens have an important role to play in the energy transition. The question now is: how can we better involve civil society in the transition?
In this webinar, the Clean Energy for EU Islands Secretariat has invited community engagement experts to share their experiences, and provide inspiration for other island and mainland communities to advance their own transition.
Webinar Video
Presentations
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Speakers
Søren Hermansen, Director of the Samsø Energy Academy, Denmark, will present a unique island and its community of 4000 inhabitants who have been pioneers of the island clean energy transition for more than 20 years. Since 2007, Samsø produces more energy than it uses and is on its way to becoming fossil-free. This was possible thanks to the common vision and hard work of the local community. Søren will share insights from the community engagement process on Samsø.
Nuria Albert Torres, Transition Coordinator at La Palma Renovable, Spain, will introduce you to an island community where citizens who wanted to embark on the energy transition succeeded in convincing their 14 municipalities to sign a common manifesto for the energy transition. On the back of this, the island government decided to fund two persons to lead the transition process. The transition team has since held a number of visioning and planning workshops with local stakeholders across all economic sectors to build a transition agenda that responds to the needs of all relevant stakeholders.
Ivan Zoković, Expert on citizen involvement in renewable energy projects, Island Movement, Croatia will introduce us to crowdsourcing solutions which can be a powerful tool to support citizen energy communities in developing renewable energy projects. Giving citizens the opportunity to invest in clean energy projects represents an important opportunity for local and regional authorities, as it increases acceptance of the clean energy transition, raises funds, and contributes to the creation of strong local communities and economies.
The webinar was moderated by Maja Jurišić from the Clean Energy for EU Islands Secretariat, who has a long experience in community management and capacity buildings on the islands.
This content has been published by Webinar: How can local community engagement accelerate the clean energy transition? . The publishing entity is responsible for the contents. The Clean Energy for EU Islands Secretariat may provide quality support to the English language version of this post.