Monitoring and evaluating eco-localisation: Lessons from UK low carbon           community groups

Hobson, Kersty; Mayne, Ruth; Hamilton, Jo

doi:10.1177/0308518x16640531

Cited by 30 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…'Bridging' or 'linking' social capital has not been explicitly analysed in the context of the relationship between CRE organisations and state and market institutions. However, many studies have observed the substantial role of trusted social networks with intermediaries and local authorities in connecting, knowledge brokering, facilitating and lobbying on behalf of CRE projects [12,13,18,36,38,56,76,89,[107][108][109][110]. Several authors have suggested that the integration of community energy support programmes within existing networks and institutions for rural development and land use has contributed to the rapid uptake of CRE in Scotland [35,49,51,111].…”

Section: Social Capital As a Preconditionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In settings characterised by uncertainty, conflicting opinions or conflicting interests, leadership that "fosters notions of learning through failure, 'constructive controversy', depersonalises politics and accepts value differences", is more likely to facilitate social capital development than leadership that stifles and excludes discerning voices [34,104,182,183]. Given an impetus for inclusivity, other factors that may influence choices around community engagement and consequent social capital impacts of CRE projects are state incentives and resources available for broad-based civil society groups, including physical space [12,184,185].…”

Section: Inclusive Engagementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite this interest, research to date has tended to focus primarily on the factors influencing the uptake and successful implementation of projects, rather than their outcomes [5,[10][11][12][13][14][15].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Taking stock of the local impacts of community owned renewable energy: A review and research agenda

Berka

Creamer

2018

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews

185

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A growing literature suggests that community owned renewable energy (CRE) projects have the potential to deliver a range of environmental and local socio-economic benefits. There is relatively little empirical evidence to substantiate this, with few systematic efforts to assess social and environmental impacts or to understand the context in which given impacts arise. In this paper, we review and conceptualise the local impacts commonly cited in the literature and dissect the empirical evidence currently available to support their occurrence. Having assessed the quality of evidence and pinpointed knowledge gaps, we draw on methodological literature to identify approaches necessary to improve our understanding of the local impacts of CRE and explore their patterns of occurrence. We find a lack of robust survey and statistical evidence across all the seven impact categories identified. Of the impacts identified, 'empowerment' and 'access to affordable energy' are found to be the least studied. In addition, several impacts are associated only with specific types of community energy projects. We argue that the paucity of consistent evidence for direct impacts associated with the development processes and direct outcomes of projects suggests that the most substantial local impacts result from medium to long term indirect project outcomes and the investment of project revenues in the local community. As such, collective funding pools and negotiation processes around their distribution towards private versus public goods play a crucial role in determining transformative local impacts of CRE.

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Section: Social Capital As a Preconditionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Inclusive Engagementmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Taking stock of the local impacts of community owned renewable energy: A review and research agenda

Berka

Creamer

2018

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews

185

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“…Place and region are used as indications of scale, in which geographical space and governance institutions are organised in a hierarchy of levels and roles, elements around which the governance of diverse urban areas is built (Poppe and Young, 2015;Hum, 2010). The change of jurisdictional scales is critically assessed to be a manifestation of neoliberal globalisation, but the change of natural scales is seen to have potentially positive implications for ecological processes (Hobson et al, 2016;Cohen and McCarthy, 2015).…”

Section: The Ontology Of the Local: Enduring Essence?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Limits of Localism

Madanipour

2017

TrAESOP

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A trend in the planning discourse tends to portray the local in a positive light. This paper critically examines localism and regionalism, from a theoretical point of view, to find out whether this positive outlook may be maintained. First the ontology of the local is examined, with its substantive, relational and experiential aspects. As a complex, multi-dimensional process, localism is then analysed at the intersection of four dimensions of power: territorial, representational, institutional, and functional. Boundaries are drawn, representations created, relations within and beyond the locality arranged, and functions allocated. The analysis shows a tendency to essentialise the local as a finished, circumscribed, commodified product, at odds with its multiplicity, diversity, inequality, porous boundaries and relational reality. There is also a gap between the definitions and functions allocated to the local in a hierarchical division of labour, relations with intra-and extra-local political and economic forces, and the mythological narratives of autonomy.

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“…As often as community is suggested as being capable of enabling shifts in energy production and consumption, increasingly evidence is emerging that tensions exist within community transitions. These tensions include: a disconnect between community policy and community action in this area [10][11][12][13]; community adopted by states as a 'policy object' used to enroll citizens for their (energy) agendas [14], within the diverse, multiple and complex ways that community forms part of governing climate 'beyond the state' [15,16]; that place attachment can serve as a motivator and barrier for engaging in community renewable energy projects [17]; the multiple roles of justice [18][19][20][21] and cultural drivers within community energy [22]; the ways these initiatives are measured and evaluated causing frustrations for those involved [23,24]; the unevenness and difference in the communities enacting energy transitions, meaning some are far more trusted than others [25]; and what 'community' itself even means whenever applied in this area [26][27][28][29][30]. These aspects regularly accompany each other too.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

One-way street? Spatiality of communities in low carbon transitions in Scotland

Aiken

2018

Energy Research & Social Science

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Community low carbon transitionsstudies of the ways in which community is used to pursue environmental aims and objectivesare closely linked to arrangements of energy production and use. Community is used as a way to pursue particular energy agendas. Yet, as is often pointed out, the trajectory of transitions imagined, the ambitiousness of the envisioned transformation, and especially the implied community invoked within this, all remain gloriously inconsistent. Within community transitions attention increasingly focuses on the tensions emerging or smoothed over as competing agendas are brought together through capacious words and concepts: for example between so-called top-down government deployed community, and so-called bottom-up emergent community action. This paper offers one way to explain and explore these tensions, where they come from and, thus, help in understanding ways in which they may be overcome. Using the case study of an attempt to target one 'street community's' environmental footprint in Scotland, the paper argues for taking an explicitly geographical and spatial lens to analyse these processes. The paper uses three forms of space-perceived space, conceived space, and lived space-to outline how three distinct but overlapping communities were spatialised. The contention of the paper is that tensions in community transitions often result from different spatial imaginaries, informing one's approach to, and 'common sense' understanding of, community. In reflecting on the spatial implications different forms of community produce (and are in turn produced by), the article argues for greater appreciation of the imbrication of space, community, and energy as mutually co-constitutive.

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Monitoring and evaluating eco-localisation: Lessons from UK low carbon community groups

Cited by 30 publications

References 45 publications

Taking stock of the local impacts of community owned renewable energy: A review and research agenda

Taking stock of the local impacts of community owned renewable energy: A review and research agenda

Limits of Localism

One-way street? Spatiality of communities in low carbon transitions in Scotland

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