SPARCS organized a workshop on June 12th, 2024 on the topics of energy citizenship and energy communities as part of Sustainability Research and Innovation congress’ Open day event in Espoo. International congress gathered participants from all over the world, offering interesting, multicultural perspectives on the workshop themes.

The goal of the workshop was to exchange experiences and knowledge on the role of community participation and engagement on developing the topics of local energy citizenship and energy communities. The workshop consisted of two working sessions, one focusing on the energy citizenship theme and another one discussing the drivers and barriers, best practices, and learnings related to the energy communities, based on the experiences of the participants.

“We were lucky to have participants from around the world, from Kanada, Brazil, Taiwan, and from European countries. The highlight of the conversations was to hear different perspectives of each country and explore what are the similarities and the differences between them. Countries have special characteristics which affect the energy citizenship or chances to join local energy communities.” -Iina Turunen, SPARCS.

The discussions showed that countries are at different stages regarding these themes. In the topic of energy citizenship, energy awareness has developed over the years, but the opportunities to participate or be an active energy citizen varies. The topic of local energy communities seemed to be a rather new concept to some of the participants, although some examples were raised.