The energy community movement has grown considerably over the past ten years. Energy communities are also expanding their activities. However, room for new energy projects is limited because of grid congestion. Therefore, citizen energy communities (CECs) are looking for ways to reduce the pressure on the grid. Against this background we ask what new roles renewable energy communities can play in grid governance. What opportunities are available to store produced electricity or to balance electricity on a neighborhood level? Are these solutions economically and technically feasible? Our article draws on a recent research project on innovative community energy services in the Netherlands. In three case studies, we investigated local solutions to balance energy production and consumption. We organized workshops and webinars for CECs and carried out interviews and technical studies. Theoretically, we use Social Movement Theory (SMT) to understand the community energy movement. Furthermore, we employ Large Technical Systems (LTS) theories about the lifecycle of infrastructures. We investigated the technical, organizational, and economic aspects of these solutions, as well as skills and knowledge. We conclude that the community energy movement is expanding its activities to new functions in the energy system, but economic feasibility is not yet within reach.
The energy community movement has grown considerably over the past ten years. Energy communities are also expanding their activities. However, room for new energy projects is limited because of grid congestion. Therefore, citizen energy communities (CECs) are looking for ways to reduce the pressure on the grid. Against this background we ask what new roles renewable energy communities can play in grid governance. What opportunities are available to store produced electricity or to balance electricity on a neighborhood level? Are these solutions economically and technically feasible? Our article draws on a recent research project on innovative community energy services in the Netherlands. In three case studies, we investigated local solutions to balance energy production and consumption. We organized workshops and webinars for CECs and carried out interviews and technical studies. Theoretically, we use Social Movement Theory (SMT) to understand the community energy movement. Furthermore, we employ Large Technical Systems (LTS) theories about the lifecycle of infrastructures. We investigated the technical, organizational, and economic aspects of these solutions, as well as skills and knowledge. We conclude that the community energy movement is expanding its activities to new functions in the energy system, but economic feasibility is not yet within reach.
Energy transition is key to achieving a sustainable future. In this transition, an often neglected pillar is raising awareness and educating youth on the benefits, complexities, and urgency of renewable energy supply and energy efficiency. The Master Energy for Society, and particularly the course “Society in Transition”, aims at providing a first overview on the urgency and complexities of the energy transition. However, educating on the energy transition brings challenges: it is a complex topic to understand for students, especially when they have diverse backgrounds. In the last years we have seen a growing interest in the use of gamification approaches in higher institutions. While most practices have been related to digital gaming approaches, there is a new trend: escape rooms. The intended output and proposed innovation is therefore the development and application of an escape room on energy transition to increase knowledge and raise motivation among our students by addressing both hard and soft skills in an innovative and original way. This project is interdisciplinary, multi-disciplinary and transdisciplinary due to the complexity of the topic; it consists of three different stages, including evaluation, and requires the involvement of students and colleagues from the master program. We are confident that this proposed innovation can lead to an improvement, based on relevant literature and previous experiences in other institutions, and has the potential to be successfully implemented in other higher education institutions in The Netherlands.
This project develops a European network for transdisciplinary innovation in artistic engagement as a catalyst for societal transformation, focusing on immersive art. It responds to the professionals in the field’s call for research into immersive art’s unique capacity to ‘move’ people through its multisensory, technosocial qualities towards collective change. The project brings together experts leading state-of-the-art research and practice in related fields with an aim to develop trajectories for artistic, methodological, and conceptual innovation for societal transformation. The nascent field of immersive art, including its potential impact on society, has been identified as a priority research area on all local-to-EU levels, but often suffers from the common (mis)perception as being technological spectacle prioritising entertainment values. Many practitioners create immersive art to enable novel forms of creative engagement to address societal issues and enact change, but have difficulty gaining recognition and support for this endeavour. A critical challenge is the lack of knowledge about how their predominantly sensuous and aesthetic experience actually lead to collective change, which remains unrecognised in the current systems of impact evaluation predicated on quantitative analysis. Recent psychological insights on awe as a profoundly transformative emotion signals a possibility to address this challenge, offering a new way to make sense of the transformational effect of directly interacting with such affective qualities of immersive art. In parallel, there is a renewed interest in the practice of cultural mediation, which brings together different stakeholders to facilitate negotiation towards collective change in diverse domains of civic life, often through creative engagements. Our project forms strategic grounds for transdisciplinary research at the intersection between these two developments. We bring together experts in immersive art, psychology, cultural mediation, digital humanities, and design across Europe to explore: How can awe-experiences be enacted in immersive art and be extended towards societal transformation?
The HAS professorship Future Food Systems is performing applied research with students and external partners to transform our food system towards a more sustainable state. In this research it is not only a question of what is needed to achieve this, but also how and with whom. The governance of our food system needs rethinking to get the transformative momentum going in a democratic and constructive manner. Building on the professorship’s research agenda and involvement in the transdisciplinary NWA research project, the postdoc will explore collective ownership and inclusive participation as two key governance concepts for food system transformation. This will be done in a participatory manner, by learning from and with innovative bottom-up initiatives and practitioners from the field. By doing so, the postdoc will gain valuable practical insights that can aid to new approaches and (policy) interventions which foster a sustainable and just food system in the Netherlands and beyond. A strong connection between research and education is created via the active research involvement of students from different study programs, supervised by the postdoc (Dr. B. van Helvoirt). The acquired knowledge is embedded in education by the postdoc by incorporating it into HAS study program curricula and courses. In addition, it will contribute to the further professional development of qualitative research skills among HAS students and staff. Through scientific, policy and popular publications, participation in (inter)national conferences and meetings with experts and practitioners, the exposure and network of the postdoc and HAS in the field of food systems and governance will be expanded. This will allow for the setting up of a continuous research effort on this topic within the professorship via follow-up research with knowledge institutes, civic society groups and partners from the professional field.
