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Accelerating the energy transition through serious gaming

Understanding the urgency and complexities of the energy transition trough serious gaming

: To have sustainable societies, we need to accelerate the energy transition towards clean energy solutions, however, awareness and understanding of the process is still limited, especially among young people. In addition, the topichas mainly been approached from an engineering angle, ignoring the social challenges: lack of public support for solar farms and large wind turbines could stop the need to act. An optimal balance considering the point of view from all parties involved is out of sight without a focus on social structures and a dialogue among all parties. In this context, universities have a critical role to play: these institutions build capacity through the development of new knowledge, new understanding and new insights, and can therefore provide effective solutions to complex societal challenges. In search of innovative approaches to reach young people, whose communicative paradigm has become more interactive and participatory, the use of serious gaming in formal education is gaining attention among scholars and practitioners: they can foster skills and abilities, contribute to content development of complex issues by integrating insights from different disciplines, and permit learning experiences that are not possible in real life. In this paper, we introduce “We-Energy Game”, which aims to create understanding on the urgency and complexities in the provision of affordable energy from renewable sources for an entire town. During the game, players negotiate, from their respective roles, which energy source they want to employ and on which location, with the goal to make a village or city energy neutral. Then, we present findings from a pre-test and posttest completed by a hundred university students in The Netherlands to analyze the effects of the game on players awareness and understanding. Results reveal positive outcomes on awareness, as well as understanding of the complexity of energy transition and the importance (and difficulty) of collaboration among stakeholders.

Stakeholder Engagement for a Local Energy Community in Energy Transition– Case of De Heuvel/Amstelwijk

The goal of a local energy community (LEC) is to create a more sustainable, resilient, and efficient energy system by reducing dependence on centralized power sources and enabling greater participation and control by local communities and individuals. LEC requires transformations in local energy systems, and strongly depends on the preferences and actions of the local actors involved. The necessity for extensive stakeholder involvement adds complexity to the energy transition, posing a significant challenge for all involved parties. The municipality of Leidschendam-Voorburg has committed to the national decision for energy transition. It has taken a strategic approach by proceeding De Heuvel/Amstelwijk as the pioneer in this initiative, leading the way for other neighborhoods to follow. It is crucial to devise strategies that effectively facilitate stakeholder engagement. To this end, a thorough stakeholder analysis is needed. Such an analysis can focus on the identification of key stakeholders, their interests, their influence, and their behavioral characteristics in relation to the energy transition. Additionally, it's crucial to uncover the challenges encountered by these stakeholders and finally develop appropriate strategies to address them hence enhance their engagement. This thesis begins with an introduction to the research background, including a presentation of the case study and a statement of the problem identified in the field, followed by the research questions underpinning the study. A thorough literature review ensues, providing a robust synthesis of existing research relating to stakeholder engagement in LECs, with a view to expediting energy transitions. The literature review not only forms the foundation for the research methods adopted in this study but also promotes in the construction of the conceptual model. Subsequent to the literature review, the research method is detailed. The filed research is conducted in five steps: Step 1 - identification of stakeholders, Step 2 - prioritization of stakeholders, Step 3 - interviewing, Step 4 - data analysis, including stakeholder profiling with mapping and addressing challenges, and finally, Step 5 - proposal of strategies for stakeholder engagement enhancement based on the expected and current levels of stakeholders engagement. This research collects necessary information to understand the profiles of stakeholders in De Heuvel/Amstelwijk, tackle challenges faced by different stakeholders, propose strategies to increase stakeholders engagement. It not only aims to enrich the depth of theoretical knowledge on the subject matter but also strives to aid in the development of a localized energy strategy that is optimally suited for the De Heuvel/Amstelwijk neighborhood as good example for other neighborhoods.

The grassroots of sustainable transition

There is growing realisation amongst local communities that the organizations and societies within which they live and work need to become more sustainable in order to secure their social, environmental and economic futures (Coyle 2011, Müller et al. 2011). The underlying motivations vary but are often traceable to an increased need for certainty or security. The search for solutions is in part practically orientated towards resilience to different forces of decline. Whilst sometimes manifested in individuals it is more often evident within local initiatives seeking common ground and related to perceived needs for local independence or increased self-determination (Musall & Kuik 2011, Seyfang & Haxeltine 2012). In our project and in this paper, our focus is on local initiatives as opposed to developments at regional or strategic scales. In the Northern Netherlands such local initiatives are often comprised of village residents or more heterogeneous groups from the wider rural community, with local initiatives co-existent in urban areas and cities. Local initiatives may focus on different sustainability issues (or a combination of them), such as transportation, energy, water, natural environment, food production, solid waste or the local economy (Coyle, 2011). However, many of these local initiatives focus on energy issues and solutions, while they might expand their interests to other issues after a prolonged existence. Therefore, in this paper we refer to these local or communal activities as Local Energy Initiatives (LEI’s) that are at the grassroots of sustainable transitions.

The transformative power of community energy: between theory and practice

Contribution to the conference: International Conference on New Pathways for Community Energy and Storage, 6-7 June 2019ABSTRACTThe community renewable energy is often seen as the way to address the societal challenge of energy transition. Many scholars foresee a key role for community energy in accelerating of the energy transition from fossil to renewable energy sources. For example, some authors investigated the transformative role of community renewable energy in the energy transition process (Seyfang and Smith, 2007; Seyfang and Haxeltine 2012; Seyfang et al. 2013; Seyfang et al. 2014; Smith et al. 2017; Martiskainen, 2017; Ruggiero et al. 2018; Hasanov and Zuidema, 2018; de Boer et al. 2018). Recognising the importance of community energy many scholars studied different internal and external conditions that contribute or hinder the success of local renewable energy initiatives (Walker et al. 2007; Bomberg and McEwen, 2012; Seyfang et al. 2013; Wirth, 2014; Hasanov and Zuidema, 2018; Ruggiero et al. 2018). One of such conditions contributing to the success of community energy initiatives is the capacity to adopt and utilize new technologies, for example, in the area of energy storage, which would increase flexibility and resilience of the communal energy supply systems.However, as noted by Ruggiero et al. (2018), the scholarship remains unclear on “how a very diverse and relatively small sector such as community energy could scale up and promote a change in the dominant way of energy production”. What is then the real transformative power of local renewable energy initiatives and whether community energy can offer an alternative to the existing energy system? This paper aims to answer these questions by confronting the critical review of theory with the recent practice of community energy in the Netherlands to build and scale up independent and self-sustaining renewable energy supply structures on the local and national scale and drafting perspectives on the possible role of community energy in the new energy system.

Imagining energy potential

Significant factors in the success or failure of energy transition arise from the spatial potential of places and their communities. Scenario planning appears to be an appropriate design instrument to enable architects to unveil, conceptualise, imagine, test and communicate this potential to stakeholders. This paper critically refelcts on the scenario as an architectural design instrument. Inscribed with political intentions, scenario planning may be a far from neutral design instrument. Instead of triggering communities to explore local energy potential, a scenario may have a normative effect on a community's imagination. The paper aims to define guidelines for the deployment of scenarios in an open, participatory planning process. To mediate in a local participatory planning process, we argue, scenarios should be situational, dynamic and open-ended, allowing or even triggering communities to (re)define the issues relevant to a place during the ongoing process of energy-transition. How, when and where should scenarios be deployed in order to enable communities to understand and develop their local energy potential?