Harnessing social innovation for energy justice: A business model perspective ☆ A R T I C L E I N F O (original) (raw)

How Communities Generate and Distribute value - an Analytical Business model Framework for Energy Initiatives

Community energy initiatives carry great hope as an alternative to centrally deployed large scale energy solutions. A large number of such initiatives have developed across the UK and they are beginning to deliver a range of low carbon solution. UK energy policy seeks build on their success and support them through appropriate policies. For meaningful policy support it is important to understand the principles underpinning these projects and how they generate and distribute value. Unlike commercial initiatives, such as utility led investments in power stations, the motivation and business models for community initiatives can be wide ranging. This paper presents potential frameworks and novel approaches to capturing the diversity and complexity of such business models. We illustrate the application of this framework based on eight case studies to explore how processes and outcomes can be shaped by the stakeholders involved and the choice of governance structures.

Investigation of Community Energy Business Models from an Institutional Perspective: Intermediaries and Policy Instruments in Selected Cases of Developing and Developed Countries

Sustainability

Community energy development and the empowerment of customers as producers are the main contributors to decentralized market solutions in energy transition policy. Despite the growing literature on community energy projects from the perspectives of various business models, drivers, and barriers, few studies display the impact of institutional factors on the community energy business model configuration. Using insights from Ostrom’s institutional framework, this study develops a conceptual framework comprising policy instruments and the intermediaries that configure the various community energy business models, and it examines this framework in the developed world of northwestern European countries (Germany, Denmark, Belgium, and the UK) and in selected cases in developing countries (Rural Central America, South Africa, Iran, and Indonesia). The findings indicate that ambitious renewable energy consumption targets and national policies in northern EU countries have resulted in politi...

Energy Justice, Social Responsibility and Sustainable Development: Case of a Power Generation Company

2017

There is an increasing demand from society for more responsibility, transparence, accountability, and social and environmental sustainability from organizations. Organizations are responding to this demands by providing social services and empowering communities. Accordingly, some organizations engaged in energy projects, especially in renewable energies, are addressing social justice while planning, developing and implementing their projects, engaging the communities in promoting awareness to them. Therefore, this paper aims to explore how energy justice, as a source of social responsibility, is approached in practice. In order to do so, a literature review on energy justice and social responsibility was developed, followed by a review of the case of a community park developed and maintained by a power generation company. According to the literature, studies on energy justice is increasing in quantity and relevance, showing the increasing importance of this subject. Thus, the case ...

Definition of Driving Factors for Designing Social Innovations in the Energy Sector

Proceedings of the Design Society

Current development of renewable energy systems (RES) is characterised by an increasing participation of citizens in the upstream decision-making process. These citizens can be future users of the RES but also members of a Renewable Energy Community that develop RES. They can be at the same time Renewable Energy producer, investor and consumer. Moreover, several type of businesses and terms are used to cope with social innovations within the energy sector: local renewable projects, sustainable energy communities or community of renewable energy production. So, actors' engagement opens new solutions for designers who are induced to share alternatives before making decisions. They usually impose constraints since the early phases of the design process. This approach implies for designers to consider new criteria related to citizens motivations and barriers. This paper presents a study to define the main factors that drive people to contribute in social innovation schemes for clean...

Enabling Community Participation for Social Innovation in the Energy Sector

Indonesian Journal of Energy

This study investigates enabling conditions for facilitating social innovation in the energy sector. This aspect is important to support the energy transition in Indonesia. This research provides appropriate project direction, including research (and action) gaps for the energy actors in Indonesia. The actors are encouraged to work further with the result of this study to stimulate the energy transition in Indonesia. This study uses a systemic change framework which recognizes four drivers of systemic change in a region: 1. transforming political ecologies; 2. configuring green economies; 3. building adaptive communities; 4. social innovation. These drivers are interconnected, and this study focuses on how the social innovation can be supported by other drivers. This study used interviews and literature review as the sources of data. There were interviews with eight experts who come from different countries and are experienced in social innovation in the energy sector. Afterward, th...

Tricarico, L. (2018). Community energy enterprises: an interpretative research framework for distributed energy policy making. In Franz, Y., Blotevogel, H. H., Danielzyk, R. (eds). Social Innovation in urban and regional development. ISR-Forschungsbericht 47, 23-31.

ISR-Forschungsbericht , 2018

New technologies for local energy systems have recently reached a degree of maturity that now allows for significant innovations and investments in community- based initiatives. This paper discusses the possibility of adopting community energy enterprises as a specific organizational model that may represent a crucial and unexplored tool for enhancing the diffusion of a distributed energy system and thus promoting new urban and regional developments. The crucial issue here is that in a distributed energy system we encounter not only production units but also the realities of ownership, decision-making and local responsibility, which are interesting factors when discussing new forms of energy provision, infrastructures and organizations. We will take a multidisciplinary look at the role of this specific type of organization that can potentially innovate the governance of the current energy system from the bottom up. It could lead to a socio-material transition in the energy market by mobilizing specific territorial factors, institutions and approaches to users’ and citizens’ engagement.