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Practical Tools for Public Participation in the Energy Evolution

Explore the complexities of public engagement in EU energy policies and governance, balancing expert knowledge with citizen input. Understand the importance of trust-building, transparency, and inclusive decision-making to transition to low-carbon energy-efficient economies. This workshop covers the EU Energy Road Map, participatory governance, multi-level governance structures, and effective engagement methods. Discover how to link bottom-up participation with top-down policy-making to create a socially, culturally, and politically acceptable energy strategy for the future.

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Practical Tools for Public Participation in the Energy Evolution

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  1. Practical Tools for Public Participation in the Energy Evolution Public Participation and Transparency in the Implementation of Energy Policies JRC Enlargement & Integration Workshop Dr Paul Dorfman UCL Energy Institute

  2. EU energy

  3. EU energy policy context • Transition to low-carbon energy-efficient economies. • European integrated energy market. • External dimension to EU energy policy. 

  4. EU policy drivers • Energy Efficiency Directive. • Energy Strategy 2020.  • Energy infrastructure development. • Framework for energy agreements with third countries. • Energy Road Map 2050.

  5. EU energy landscapes • Located between state and market • Choices and trade-offs over: • Supply-side. • Demand-side. • Transmission and load-balancing infrastructure.

  6. Options • European-scale networks for energy distribution. • Restructuring of transport and built environment. • Evolutionary renewable technology. • CHP gas, clean-burn coal and nuclear - with proposals for CCS and nuclear waste management. • Demand-side management. • Local distributed energy.

  7. Diversity • These developments will vary in their acceptability to differing sections of the public and for different stakeholders. • And will also vary from country to country.

  8. Choices • We are faced with collective choices. • Long-term decisions across the entire field of industrial strategy depend on this.

  9. EC 2050 Low Carbon Road Map • “Citizens need to be informed and engaged in the decision-making process, while technological choices need to take account of the local environment.”

  10. EU energy governance • Differing levels of government, (local, regional, and national). • Differing spheres of society (institutional, public, social media community). • Differing localities (local, regional, state).

  11. Multi-lateral participatory governance based • European: Convergence and integration at EU level. • National: Differing cultural, regulatory, and energy landscapes. • Metropolitan: Vital role and capacity for action at the city level. • Local: Lived experience of communities.

  12. EU participatory democracy • Balancing expert knowledge with everyday knowledge to find a democratic ‘mean’. • Drive for more accountable, transparent, and publicly acceptable decision-making - no longer seen as an optional ‘add-on’ to policy. • To meet the needs of the public - needs to be socially, culturally and politically acceptable as well as technologically feasible.

  13. Complexity • Research says, in the right circumstances, people can work with complex data and uncertainty.

  14. Best value • Research says that participation can agree and deliver national, regional, city, and local strategic objectives - at at a lower cost to the public purse and with less bureaucracy than traditional processes.

  15. Purpose • Arrive at considered collective conclusions to inform decision making. • Participation must ‘make a difference’ to decision-making. • Need for transparency in the assessment and decision-making process - including publication of assessment criteria and decision-support methods.

  16. Linking ‘bottom-up’ with‘top-down’ • Formal measures for linking low-carbon energy participation to policy and governance structures are not yet in place.

  17. How to build this ‘negotiationspace’?

  18. UK Ministry of Defense (MoD)Submarine DismantlingProject (SDP) • https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/submarine-dismantling-project

  19. UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) Submarine Dismantling Project (SDP) • Where to dismantle the UK nuclear submarines. • How to dismantle the UK nuclear submarines. • Where to store the radioactive waste and the submarine reactors.

  20. Trust-building is key • Open negotiation - respect differing views and knowledge. • Good mechanism for transparency and accountability. • Clarity about purpose, objectives and scope. • Inclusion of diverse stakeholders. • Accurate and balanced information. • Independent expertise. • Oversight and evaluation.

  21. ‘Upstream’ engagement • ‘Upstream’ engagement aims to find out how people, stakeholders and local communities want to be engaged. • Inclusive ‘outreach’. • ‘Out’ problems that will arise anyway. • Take time to get there quicker.

  22. Who will participate? • Statutory and non-statutory policymakers, government departments, devolved administrations, local government and local authorities, energy regulators, transmission system operators, industrial corporations and businesses, investment banks, trade associations, non-governmental organizations, local community based organisations, independent energy sector experts, and research institutes.

  23. Methods • Stakeholder dialogues. • Public meetings. • Citizens’ panels, events, forums, workshops. • ‘Kitchen round-tables’, ‘test-beds’. • Mentoring, peer exchange. • Interactive web-sites. • Communication through press and media.

  24. Tools • Scenario building and modeling. • Participatory Multi Criteria Analysis (PMCA). • Virtual reality techniques - including 3D visualization and geographic information systems (GIS) mapping. • Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). • Quantitative environmental assessment.

  25. Capturing feedback • Comments and questions are captured, acknowledged, recorded in a structured database. • Tagged by origin, topic/perspective, and relevant option assessment area. • To go up immediately on a dedicated web-site and into later published Reports - via annexes.

  26. No ‘free lunch’ • It takes resources to ask and work through a range of ‘what if’ questions.

  27. Not always ‘plain sailing’ • Not a simple task to encourage citizens, NGOs, government departments and industry to participate co-operatively. • Can be complicated to combine several different tools for decision-making into a single coherent process.

  28. Tensions can arise • Over framing boundary conditions for dialogues. • Whether all main stakeholders are included in discussion. • The acceptance of all stakeholders as equal contributors. • Levels of planning options offered. • Perceived openness to serious policy influence.

  29. So • Concentrate on the process, not the outcome.

  30. Channel and focus • Sheer weight of statutory, citizen, and stakeholder civil society involvement in energy - at local, city, regional, national, and pan-EU levels.

  31. Public attitudes to energy are rooted in values • At a human individual level: Safety, energy poverty and the access of vulnerable groups to affordable supply. • At a national level: Energy dependency and exposure to external influence.

  32. Strategic goal for complexissues with uncertain futures • Not be to find the single ‘right technical answer’ to the problem. • But to bring people together - and keep them talking to each other to make sure that better decisions are made in future.

  33. Future national energy mix scenarios: public engagement processes in the EU and elsewhere • http://www.eesc.europa.eu/resources/docs/20121212-final-report-eesc-comm-05-2012_formatted.pdf

  34. Thank You Dr Paul Dorfman www.ucl.ac.uk/energy

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