Power to empowerment : a case study on how local policy can stimulate local energy initiatives to contribute to the energy transition

Climate change can be described as world’s biggest problem nowadays. Citizens are
acting and organizing themselves in so-called local energy initiatives; organisations that
help contributing to the energy transition, because of their decentralized and
sustainable ambitions. Local policy makers are the most important in support of their
development. In the case of Rotterdam, the local energy community is still developing
and local policy needs a clear view of the energy initiatives in order to stimulate this
development. This leads to the following main research question:
How can local policy motivate energy initiatives to contribute to the energy
transition in the community of Rotterdam?
With the Q-methodology three different perspectives were found, that indicate there are
three different kinds of energy initiatives in Rotterdam: 1) the typical energy initiative,
2) the business-orientated energy initiative and 3) the fluid energy initiative. To
motivate the development of local energy initiatives, local policy should pay attention to
three parts. First, to motivate more citizens to organize themselves in energy initiatives,
the promoting role of the municipality should be increased with promotional activities,
like raising awareness under citizens. Second, to motivate energy initiatives to remain
existing on the long-term and contribute to the energy transition, the municipality
should provide supporting policy instruments, such as a direct contact or coaching
sessions. Third, to create self-sustaining organisations that become independent of
policy support, policy should strengthen the network, for example with cooperation
with intermediary organisations. To adopt this research to other communities, it is
important to consider the assumptions of the city Rotterdam, which are the intrinsic
motivation and entrepreneurial mind-set under citizens.