Municipalities team up to amplify energy transition successes
Many European cities are municipal energy innovators, blazing a trail towards a green energy transition. Others are eager to get onboard but uncertain of where to begin and how to proceed. The EU-funded mPOWER project with its seven partners from Croatia, France, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK brought these two groups together in a peer-to-peer learning programme to ignite municipal action that will fuel just, clean and democratic energy transitions.
Municipal energy innovation via knowledge sharing and collaboration
The response to mPOWER’s recruitment campaign was overwhelming. According to Rowan Mataram, Sustainable Cities Strategy and Process Lead at Platform London and mPOWER coordinator, “the project exceeded its participation goal by 46 %, enabling 175 relationships with individual municipal actors.” Three different peer-to-peer learning support streams were implemented: mPOWER Digital, mPOWER Exchange and mPOWER Activate. Their required levels of commitment and participation varied to accommodate varying levels of availability, experience and engagement. mPOWER Digital offered an online course focused on various energy system themes with weekly webinars at which invited guest presentations on special topics were followed by interactive discussions. “We were also successful in using the course to make the case for democratic public ownership,” adds Helen Traill, Research Associate in Urban Transitions under Andrew Cumbers, project principal investigator, at the University of Glasgow. mPOWER Exchange enabled participants to visit other local authorities, spending in-person time discussing existing and ideas for developing new energy projects. Participants in mPOWER Exchange also had the opportunity to participate in mPOWER Activate, putting knowledge into practice through collaborative projects.
Barriers to municipal energy initiatives
mPOWER identified a variety of impediments to municipal energy transitions. Lacking access to capital with favourable terms was perhaps the most important. Lacking access to data was also critical, as most data is owned by private companies and not available to municipalities. However, struggles with citizen involvement and devolution of power were also prominent. These challenges made the existing level of commitment and action at the municipal level in Europe so impressive. More than 90 % of the municipalities in mPOWER’s survey (85 municipalities in countries all over Europe) were engaged in energy generation.
Leaving a legacy for the future
“We discovered a variety of exciting and context-specific actions taken by municipalities across Europe. Whilst no single project can be replicated in full elsewhere, other cities can draw inspiration from these experiences to create solutions suitable to their conditions,” notes Mataram. For example, the Plymouth City Council and Nottingham City Council, pioneers in work on fuel poverty and retrofit in the UK, overcame the challenges ensuring the most vulnerable can access retrofit programmes. The solutions have been categorised into specific energy themes and incorporated into best practice guides with plentiful examples. You can listen to episodes of the project’s inspiring City Stories podcast for five years beyond the project end as well. mPOWER succeeded in its goals of building energy transition capacity among municipal participants. “Among the most exciting outcomes was feedback demonstrating how vital the peer learning programmes were to inspiring municipalities to use the energy transition as a way to deepen democratic processes, increase standards of living and reduce energy poverty,” adds Traill. Mataram and Traill summarise: “Collaboration and learning are vital for the energy transition of municipalities to not only succeed but foster more democratic practices.” mPOWER has laid the groundwork for a just energy transition with increasing municipal ownership and democratic control at a local level.
Keywords
mPOWER, municipal, energy transition, municipalities, peer-to-peer learning, learning programme, best practice, podcast