Energy Allies

We are witnessing how local governments in the U.S. and Europe are rallying to respond to the climate challenge and are driving the transition to a sustainable low carbon future. Showing that citizen and business participation makes climate and energy policies more effective might inspire others to follow suit. That, in turn, could make it easier for national leaders to act more forcefully.

Energy Allies is a peer-to-peer lab connecting European and US-American citymakers around questions on civil society engagement in climate and energy policies. To this end, GMF and Energy Cities have designed a customised format to stimulate a thoughtful peer-to-peer conversation through two three-day-long Learning Lab and Workshops activity in Cambridge (Massachusetts), from October 28-31, 2018, and Nantes (France), from April 2-4, 2019.

The participating cities : Charlotte, North Carolina | Cambridge, Massachusetts | Heidelberg, Germany | Nantes, France

Local collaboration schemes in the spotlight

Energy Cities started its work around how to trigger and institutionalise stakeholders’ involvement already many years ago. Our exploratory study on New dialogues between cities and local stakeholders gave rich insights into social practices and governance methods that have been tested all over Europe. Energy Allies will help following up on and updating these findings, while adding the transatlantic perspective.

How it works

“Energy Allies” aims to understand, nurture, and lift collaboration between the local representatives and key stakeholders needed to drive the energy transition forward and unleash their full potential for action.

These activities are scheduled to take place in fall 2018 in the United States and spring 2019 in the EU and will provide time blocks for expert intervention and group dialogue on the three key challenges that emanate from the energy transition policy planning and action, and which are of direct concern to local, civil society groups, and local leaders :

• City visioning and planning for low-carbon cities : how to reflect the motivations of civil society groups and maximize their decision-making ;
• Local energy ownership and energy access : how to ensure that civil society groups can become prosumers and participate in the production of renewable energy ;
• Innovation : what can be done to allow local stakeholders to flourish in the energy transition process and multiply existing civil society groups’ innovations on a large scale ?

The final phase of the project will consist of analysing and synthesising the discussions from the peer learning network to provide substantive insight and recommendations on strategic partnerships and collaborations between local civil society groups and government leaders for coordinated policy planning and action to support and accelerate the energy transition across the Atlantic.

Sharing EU policies and best practices

“Energy Allies : Transatlantic Multi-stakeholder Dialogues for the Local Energy Transition,” is funded by the European Union under the program “EU–U.S. : Transatlantic Civil Society Dialogues (TCSD) to foster strategic partnerships and collaboration between local civil society and government leaders, and embed them as a constant pillar in the policy planning and implementation action that supports cities’ energy transition.