What does empowerment mean in practice? What motivates people to act? How and why do different energy community setups affect people´s perception and motivation to join?
Many are the factors that influence people´s willingness and opportunity to actively engage in energy transition and initiatives. In addition to the structural financial and legal barriers to energy citizenship, there are several demographic, social, and psychological aspects that play a key role in empowering people to act and exercise their rights and responsibilities as energy citizens. The goals of this session are:
- to explore the concept of empowerment in energy transition,
- to provide an understanding and discuss motivating factors fostering the emergence and mainstreaming of energy citizenship and community energy initiatives,
- to present tools and initiatives supporting empowerment in energy transition.
The instructors for this module are:
Dr. Lise Jans is Associate Professor in social-environmental psychology at the University of Groningen and the principal investigator of the University of Groningen on the EC2 project. She examines how groups (and group identities) are formed and changed, and the role of groups in promoting sustainable behaviors and sustainability transitions from the bottom up.
Benedetta Buccolini is a Justice, Democracy, and Equity Expert at ICLEI Europe, a network of local governments for sustainability. Her work focuses on inclusive and sustainable development initiatives that find their roots in local communities, practices, and cultures. For EC2, she leads the work on policy recommendations, capacity building, and inclusion.
