Recently I received notification that two research proposals I wrote last year on citizen engagement in energy issues have been accepted. Great! This means I will be able to do a fair amount of research in this area over the next two years and hopefully put together a PhD from this work.
One of the proposals specifically deals with renewable energy cooperatives – mainly looking at developments in Austria and Germany. I will try to look at these energy cooperatives as 'social innovations' - introducing new forms of socio-economic organisation into the energy system. I'll be looking mostly at the meso/macro level of institutional framework conditions, different types of actor roles and resources and at linkages to the mainstream regime of energy provision. However, there are also partners in the project that will do a micro-level analysis of stakeholder relations / network formation within two cooperatives.
The second project will involve two in-depth case studies of different forms of citizen engagement in energy issues: One of them probably also centered around an (emerging) photovoltaics cooperative in Austria, the other a small 'eco-region' striving for CO2 neutrality. The project will be about both institutional framework conditions and motivations of engaged individuals. Project partners will also look at 'styles of energy consumptions' of people involved in the initiatives. In a second project phase we will also work together with practitioners in the initiatives, trying to get more people involved and/or setting new impulses for their further development.
Well, so much for my plans for the next two years :) I'll keep you updated about the way things progress!