Andreas Rüdinger as key-note speaker at the conference "Devolution: European energy transition's best friend?". The event was organised by CEDEC (European Federation of Local Energy Companies), EnergyCities and Client Earth as part of the European Sustainable Energy Week (EUSEW).
Overview
Europe’s transitioning energy sector has been giving new impetus to an "old" trend: devolution. While in many regions of Europe a local or regional energy generation and supply has been common for many years, new local initiatives have emerged in Europe in recent years, facilitated by the EU’s energy and climate agenda.
Many local and regional authorities in Europe are engaged in the energy transition. New municipality-owned energy companies (Stadtwerke) have been founded, while energy cooperatives and citizen projects have emerged. All of them have citizens – directly or indirectly - as their shareholders and provide citizens with an active participatory role in implementing sustainable energy policies.
The event will look behind this trend towards devolution and its implications, both in practical and policy terms. Discussions will investigate the rationale behind ongoing initiatives, their challenges and achievements. Best practices of citizen-driven decentralisation will be presented. Links will be made between the roles that local and regional authorities are striving to assume and the legal frameworks at national and EU level that either facilitate or obstruct active engagement. Policy-makers will be invited to discuss how the gap between the European local level can be bridged, and how these initiatives can be supported from Brussels – in particular in the context of the 2030 climate and energy package.
