Mari Martiskainen

Making the most of community energies: Three perspectives on grassroots innovation:

Grassroots innovations for sustainability are attracting increasing policy attention. Drawing upon a wide range of empirical research into community energy in the UK, and taking recent support from national government as a case study, we apply three distinct analytical perspectives: strategic niche management, niche policy advocacy, and critical niches. Whilst the first and second perspectives appear to explain policy influence in grassroots innovation adequately, each also shuts out more transformational possibilities. We therefore argue that, if grassroots innovation is to realise its full potential, then we need to also pursue a third, critical niches perspective, and open up debate about more socially transformative pathways to sustainability.

Technological innovation systems for microgeneration in the UK and Germany - a functional analysis

This paper examines the deployment of microgeneration in Germany and the UK from a technological innovation systems (TIS) perspective. Based on the TIS functions approach, we condense supportive and obstructive factors and discuss the differences in the respective national setting for small-scale renewable and combined heat and power (CHP) technologies. The findings underline the relevance of legitimation and of institutional and financial support. High degrees of legitimacy were achieved in both the UK and Germany. In Germany, early institutional and financial support reduced uncertainty for new market entrants and consumers, and fuelled a self-reinforcing diffusion dynamic for small renewables. In the UK, by comparison, microgeneration enjoys little support. The paper concludes that distributed generation will not be successful without a more focussed and technology-oriented innovation policy.

Energy and the Citizen

The aim of this chapter is to provide further understanding of people’s everyday energy use in high consumption nations, their role in relation to wider energy systems and their governance, and the associated environmental and economic impacts. From this understanding, the chapter identifies some of the key challenges involved in reducing emissions from the household sector and personal transport, and where government policies and individual and collective initiatives can reduce these impacts. Policy is discussed in relation to energy efficiency and new technologies, including micro-generation and smarter metering. The chapter concludes with recommendations for policy action and the steps others can take in order to make residential living more sustainable and energy efficient.

Microgeneration in the UK and Germany from a Technological Innovation Systems Perspective

Microgeneration, the production of electricity at the level of individual buildings or small local communities, has recently enjoyed increasing attention from politicians and energy analysts. A more decentralized or distributed electricity generation system could contribute to a transition towards a more sustainable energy system. Compared to the traditional electricity system based on fossil fuels and nuclear energy, microgeneration can in many circumstances reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions when it replaces fossil fuels by renewable fuels, and also by increasing total efficiency through the combined generation of heat and power in small cogeneration units. In addition, generation of power close to the point of use could reduce power transport over long distances and thereby increase the overall efficiency of the electricity system and reliability of power supply. Finally, microgeneration can increase consumers’ choice about their energy provision and potentially improve overall competition (Pehnt et al. 2006).

Community energy initiatives to alleviate fuel poverty: the material politics of Energy Cafés

ABSTRACT Community action has an increasingly prominent role in the debates surrounding transitions to sustainability. Initiatives such as community energy projects, community gardens, local food networks and car sharing clubs provide new spaces for sustainable consumption, and combinations of technological and social innovations. These initiatives, which are often driven by social good rather than by pure monetary motives, have been conceptualised as grassroots innovations. Previous research in grassroots innovations has largely focused on conceptualising such initiatives and analysing their potential for replication and diffusion; there has been less research in the politics involved in these initiatives. We examine grassroots innovations as forms of political engagement that is different from the 1970s’ alternative technology movements. Through an analysis of community-run Energy Cafés in the United Kingdom, we argue that while present-day grassroots innovations appear less explicitly political than their predecessors, they can still represent a form of political participation. Through the analytical lens of material politics, we investigate how Energy Cafés engage in diverse – explicit and implicit, more or less conscious – forms of political engagement. In particular, their work to “demystify” clients’ energy bills can unravel into various forms of advocacy and engagement with energy technologies and practices in the home. Some Energy Café practices also make space for a needs-driven approach that acknowledges the embeddedness of energy in the household and wider society.

Energy policy implications

Over 20 years ago UN Commission on Environment and Development called on governments around the world to make sustainable development their first priority. The ‘Brundtland Report’ provided a definition still regularly quoted in policy documents committing governments to the aim. Sustainable development is: [D]evelopment that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two concepts: the concept of ‘needs’, in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organisation on the environment’s ability to meet present and future needs. (WCED, 1987: 43) The opening sentence above has become very familiar, but the two clarifying points that follow are rarely included. Sustainable development is now interpreted in diverse ways in various national and international contexts, often such that the detail presents little challenge to the status quo. For example, in the UK it has been interpreted as a domestic ‘quality of life’ agenda, or as a matter of ‘balancing’ economic, social and environmental protection goals in policymaking.

Conclusions: transitions, governance and appraisal

Around the world energy policy is becoming more politically heated. An interrelated set of factors explains this: new scientific findings about climate change and its likely consequences; rising energy prices; controversy about nuclear ambitions; fears about the security of fossil fuel supplies relating to short-term geopolitical instabilities; rapid demand growth in countries such as China and India; the prospect of declining total world oil production, and its consequences for fossil fuel prices and energy security in coming decades; and international tensions around all of these issues.