ENCLUDE had an exciting and busy start in 2021! After kicking-off the project in June, we had:

• dived deep into disentangling the energy citizenship concept,

• documented 80 case studies of energy communities and collectives for behavioral change,

• started identifying clusters of citizens with different views and roles towards decarbonization,

• warmed up our models to develop demand-oriented decarbonization pathways,

• released our brand new project website,

• and co-defined with NGOs the goals of our Academy for Energy Citizen Leadership.

The latter will be the focus of this very first newsletter. Enjoy the read!

On 23 November 2021, ENCLUDE held a workshop with representatives from 18 NGOs working with citizens on energy, poverty, and sustainability topics. The NGOs came from a variety of countries, including Belgium, France, Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands, Niger, North Macedonia, and Romania.

Logos of the participating NGOs

The purpose of the workshop was to first understand challenges that the NGOs are facing in their work, as well as the needs of the citizens they are working with. Then, we collectively identified what the ENCLUDE Academy can do to address these issues.

Based on this, we have elaborated the role of the NGOs in the Academy and their contribution in terms of recruiting Energy Citizen Leaders. As a follow-up to the workshop, we are now meeting with each NGO bilaterally to pinpoint the recruiting strategy as well as to co-design the modules for the Academy. Overall, the main discussion points of the workshop were the following.

Many participants associated the term with participation and communities, especially on energy topics, but they also gave a variety of other suggestions such as empowerment, energy democracy, and energy poverty.

• Lack of consistent support from local authorities
• Finding the right language, vocabulary, arguments, and communication style to connect with different groups of people for participating in the energy transition
• Obtaining financial support from the EU or other sources to join the energy transition
• Coordinating with national legislators and representatives of energy systems infrastructure
• Lack of access to “best practice” examples across the world, as well as legal, technical, communication and business expertise for community actions

• Opportunity for practical learning: the Academy will provide educational materials for citizens in the form of short videos, online workshops, and social learning activities. These will be accompanied with building a community of practice with whom they can share, reflect, and act together.
• Meeting place for collaboration: the Academy will facilitate dialog and coordinate meetings between municipalities, NGOs, and individual stakeholders to improve collaboration of existing and future projects related to decarbonization.
• Providing a “bird’s-eye” view while supporting bottom-up actions for inclusive decarbonization: the Academy will provide a report of best practices to the participating NGOs, based on the project’s access to case studies of collective energy initiatives from around the world and the project’s modeling efforts.

• Identify potential participants: June 2021 – May 2022

• Create modules: September 2021 – July 2022

• Implement the Academy: August 2022 – June 2023

• Gather feedback on the implementation: June 2023 – February 2024

On 14 September 2021, ENCLUDE's coordinator Dr. BinBin Pearce presented the project at the International Transdisciplinarity Conference ITD21. Dr. Pearce presented the project's concept, methodology, and aims, as well as explicitly pointed out the contributions of transdisciplinarity research to decarbonization processes taking place in the EU. For more information about the conference, visit the ITD21 website.

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