Entrepreneurial Sustainability Engagement of Insiders Initiating Energy System Transition
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Theory
2.1. Sustainability Transitions Perspectives
2.2. Entrepreneurship Perspectives
2.3. Entrepreneurial Insider Sustainability Engagement Perspective
3. Method
“…a narrative perspective does not begin with a priori assumptions by researchers on what counts as contexts or how boundaries should be drawn. Instead, a narrative perspective draws attention to attempts by entrepreneurs to contextualize innovation through relational, temporal and performative efforts. […] As different entrepreneurial narratives accumulate, they often reference each other, leading to the emergence of a collective field identity”.([76], p. 1181)
4. Case Descriptions
4.1. The Energy District: Connecting Electricity, Heating and Cooling
“The energy district contributes to reducing energy peaks and at the same time reduces the use of fossil energy, which still dominates the European energy market”, says The Director of Renewable Electricity from the municipality owned energy company. He continues: “There are multiple of interesting outputs from this initiative and we can take our learnings to other parts of the energy system. The use of thermal inertia, for example, is very interesting, not least from a district heating perspective. We who own the energy grids must also find new ways to include smaller local energy producing actors. […] And we need to train for increased electricity price and demand fluctuations in order to provide the future citizens of our city a robust energy system that can handle increased proportions of variable production. […] But we also have a parallel discussion internally about the purpose of this initiative and what is it for us. And that discussion has not yet landed”.
“The [Energy District] initiative confirms our city as a frontrunner in developing the energy solutions of a fossil-free society […] Hopefully, the [Energy District] model will speed up energy transitions across Europe” says the Mayor of the City at the time.
“It all started around 2014. At the time I was a R&D Strategist at the municipality-owned energy company. We had become a small group of individuals, gathered around a common interest in flexibility issues and smart grids [...] We were working for different employers, such as academia; the property owners at the university campus; a research institute; the city owned Science Park, and the municipality owned energy company […] We all had slightly different interest and drivers in this. The researchers, for example, wanted to test smart grid solutions and investigate flexibility issues in the distribution grid and someone was interested in micro-grids. Personally, I was mostly curious about what a localized energy system would look like and if an established energy company could play a role in such a system” says the Project Coordinator at the Science Park.
“It was the [former R&D Strategist at the municipality-owned energy company, now] Project Coordinator, working at the Science Park, who started to arrange these meetings” says the Energy Market Researcher at the involved research institute. And he continues: “It was a handful of people. Most of us knew each other beforehand. We had informal meetings and just talked a lot about different aspects of potential future energy systems. Although, we didn’t have a grand plan, all of us had some common interests—or at least, there was no conflicting interests”.
“There was a lot of things going on at the time. I had just changed jobs, moving from being a R&D Strategist at the municipality-owned energy company, starting at the Science Park. I was engaged in a project with the director [of an energy area] at the university. We had previously been colleagues at municipality-owned energy company. He was my R&D manager back then. Working for the Energy area at the university, he had this idea about using the campus to demonstrate energy solutions [...] There were some scattered projects going on at the campus, focusing on different aspects of smart, intelligent or sustainable energy systems. For example, solar panels were installed at some of the rooftops by one of the property owners at the campus, and there was a research project on energy system flexibility issues, related to an electric bus. But the two of us wanted to do something more coordinated. Something systemic. Something bigger […] Being at the Science Park, I had the possibilities to engage into this, so I got some friends together to discuss this” says the Project Coordinator.
“It was the Area Manager for Energy, at the Regional Development Office, that found the Urban Innovation Action call. There was a call from the European Commission” says the Initial Project Leader for the Energy District initiative. She continues: “The Urban Innovation Action was launched in 2014, with the objective to test new and unproven solutions to address urban challenges. I was at the time responsible for international relations at the Science Park. I had coordinated a European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program application, focusing on city development and including different aspects of energy efficiency. It had just been rejected, so I had time, and I could bring a lot of experiences from that process into the energy district project”.
“It was obvious that the call was relevant for us, because it was just those types of energy system issues that we had been discussing” says the Area Manager for Energy at the Regional Development Office. He continues: “The call was published at the end of December and Christmas holidays delayed the start of the application process. But turning our discussions into an application really got us going. We were short of time because we only had two month or so to the deadline, but we managed […] I would say that we managed to get the application done in such a short time because we had been talking about this for a while, and we were a constellation of individuals from different actors that already knew and trusted each other […] Personally I think it is interesting to investigate different types of values. For instance, I have my own solar PV-panel, and sometimes they are good for me, and sometimes they provide more value for the energy system”.
“I was thrown into the writing process. The municipality-owned energy company had managed to provide some funding for a consultant to arrange the writing process and assemble all the bits and pieces for the application. But he needed some technical support. There were a few bits and pieces missing. We had the campus as a geographical area and there was this idea about energy exchange within this area—but the question was still how this should be arranged. So, I suggested that it would be cool if we could create a local marketplace—and there it was” says the Energy Market Researcher at the involved research institute.
“It was only two and a half weeks before we had to submit the application when this idea about a marketplace came up. This was the missing piece” says the Project Coordinator at the Science Park, and he continues: “I had a meeting scheduled with an old friend at a Swedish telecom company the day after, so I pitched the idea for him. I didn’t know what to hope for, but he found it really interesting and he managed to get a permission from his boss during the afternoon and joined right away”.
“Working with EU funding proposals was new for me, so I’m glad that the consultant got involved. He did a very good job in squeezing all wishes into one and the same document […] I provided information about our buildings’ energy systems and I think I contributed quite a lot to the technical aspects of connecting different these systems. But just to refit our systems was not enough for the application, so that’s why the marketplace came in. […] Personally, I was most interested in the technical aspects on how to integrate different energy systems in the buildings. I wanted to reduce the total amount of energy usage. That is, what is important for our tenants and for society. The marketplace, as such, is maybe not so relevant for us property owners”, says the Technology Manager from the property owner at campus and he continues: “The [Energy District] initiatives has become a success and we communicate it a lot internally and externally. Now we are doing a similar thing at a university campus in the northern part of Sweden. It is not exactly the same, but it is similar when it comes to flexible energy storage and integration of different energy systems.”
“The [Energy District] initiative has received a lot of national public attention. But it is still difficult for us to use these things in practice. Flexibility is important, and the [Energy District] initiative has pushed questions about, for example, how we can use district heating. Next generation district heating is probably much more decentralized. But there are regulations, etc. that still need to be changed for us, in order to fully engage in these issues. One great challenge, for example, is the information sharing. There are a lot of different actors who owns different data”, says the R&D Strategist at the municipality-owned energy company. She continues: “Although, people have moved around between different employers through the years, the ones engaging in the [Energy District] initiative still meet to discuss these issues and ideas for future initiatives. We are basically the same group of individuals who engage in these kinds of initiatives—and we have been so for quite a while”.
4.2. The Village: A Local Energy System
“The customers can voluntarily join the setup through a separate agreement, for which they individually receive a remuneration based on the household’s actual contribution and consumption” says the Project Leader for The Village and he continues “It is important for us to have a close dialogue with the customers, or the villagers, and the municipality. So, we employed a communicator early on, for the dialogue with the villagers. The [Village] initiative was received very well. Much better than we expected. I think the possibilities for them to engage has increased their satisfaction”.
The journey of this initiative started already in 2014, and 1230 km further up north. “We had, or still have, this customer. It is a couple, who runs a wildlife camp in a in a remote village with less than fifteen residents, in the northern part of Sweden. At the time, they often suffered from 20–30 h power outages, because the electricity grid was substandard in that area. Obviously, this was a problem for them, because they wanted to ensure a positive experience for their customers. I was Operational Manager at the time, so I was assigned to get in contact with them”, says the Region Director at the DSO, and he continues: “I called them, and we got along quite well. They actually invited me up, so I brought a trainee, and we flew up to visit them […] When we were up there, they suggested that they might as well produce their own electricity. They had windmills at a visible distance, a river passing by, and a lot of land for solar panels. It really made sense, to have it all local. That was when the idea was born. Right there”.
“The workshop was arranged by our international unit. We were discussing potential consequences of the recently started ‘Energiewende’—the phase-out of coal, fossil and nuclear power in Germany. We were asked if we had any initiatives in the pipe–but no one had, really. So, with the wildlife camp in the back of my head, I raised my hand and said that we had a case in Sweden where we could test these things out. […] These types of projects are both good and bad, because they require some engagement to get them done, but they also come with some money […] The initiative could therefore be labelled as ‘strategic future work’ and it made it possible for us to spend some time on it, without being questioned by colleagues in the organization. The very first thing we did was actually to make plans for how we could anchor this internally, because none of us had any idea of what a local energy system would look like […] If I hadn’t taken that chance, there would not be a local system in this village. It would probably had become something different, somewhere else”.
“All of us, who were engaged in the initiative, were very enthusiastic. Even though we didn’t have a clue what a local energy system was, we wanted to test if it was possible to produce and use energy locally”, says the Strategist. He continues: “There were of course also a lot of people around us, being skeptical about what we were doing. After all, ‘the usual way’ worked just fine, and it had many advantages […] I think we all had an idea about changing the energy system and make contributions to a sustainable society. Some of us are perhaps more interested in technical challenges, while others more towards sustainability and contributing to the society. But [environmental] sustainability was probably the main driver for all of us.”
“As it has turned out, it works great to run the village disconnected from the regional electric grid and still run the village-grid in balance” says the current project manager of the project. And he continues: “The next thing we need to figure out is if there is a business case in this. It has never been a criterion, until now […] It is like ‘Lego’, we can use bits and pieces of what we have learnt in other situations […] We have recently started to test different demand-side response technologies for the households to reduce energy peak times and to introduce electric vehicles in the system. I think decentralization in the electricity grid will have a huge effect on future energy systems. But policy is not here yet.”
5. Analysis
6. Discussion
7. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Perspective | (1) Appreciates Insiders—i.e., Individuals with Employments Within the Socio-Technical Regime? | (2) Comprises Individually Chosen Entrepreneurial Actions? | (3) Recognizes Personalized Sustainability Beliefs? |
---|---|---|---|
Multi-level perspective | No | Yes, but only in niches | Yes, but only in niches |
Technological innovation systems | No | Yes, in entrepreneurial experimentation | No (with some exceptions) |
Transition management | Yes | Not individually chosen, but linked to roles in processes | Not personalized, but ascribed to roles in process |
Mainstream Entrepreneurship | No | Yes | No |
Corporate entrepreneurship/ Intrapreneurship | Yes | Yes | No |
Social entrepreneurship | No | Yes | Yes |
Entrepreneurial insider sustainability engagement (introduced here) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Initiative and Organizational Role | Organizational Affiliation | Personal Interest/Reasons for Engaging | Nature of Engagement |
---|---|---|---|
The Energy District | |||
Director of Renewable Electricity | Municipality owned energy company | Learnings about technical issues in relation to futures in the energy system | Joined the initiative during a temporary stand in for the R&D Strategist. |
Project Coordinator (former R&D Strategist) | Science Park | Technology interests for increased efficiencies and future roles for established energy firms | Seizes the opportunity to use the university campus are for a coordinated sustainability initiative |
Energy Market Researcher | Research institute | Future energy system with lower environmental impact | Self-chosen work for writing the funding application. Introduces the local energy market |
Area Manager for Energy | Regional Development Office | Sustainability and energy system values | Self-chosen work to enable, coordinate and contributing to an application to an EU call |
Initial Project Leader | Science Park | Fulfilling a professional role | Professionally engaged with skills and knowledge about the application process. |
Programmer | Multinational telecom company | Not known | Professionally engaged with skills and competences for realizing the local energy market, using an existing ICT-solution |
Technology Manager | Property Owner at campus | Innovation interest and energy reduction for tenants and for the society | Enables sensor implementations and information sharing |
R&D Strategist | Municipality owned energy company | Future energy distribution systems with lower environmental impact | Joined the initiative when taking over it from the former R&D Strategist |
The Village | |||
Director of Strategy and Business Development | Distribution System Operator | Learnings about technical issues in relation to futures in the energy system | Marketing the initiative as an important sustainability initiative |
House Owner | Grassroot engaged prosumer and villager | Contribute to environmental sustainability. Be part of the initiative | Engaged prosumer with potential return of investment |
Project Leader | Distribution System Operator | Sustainability and energy system values | Maneuvering the initiative and selling the benefits with localized energy system internally |
Region Director | Distribution System Operator | Localized energy systems with resilience and lowered environmental impact | Self-chosen work to start the initiative |
Strategist | Distribution System Operator | Technical challenges and environmental sustainability | Self-chosen work to start the initiative |
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Fernqvist, N.; Lundqvist, M. Entrepreneurial Sustainability Engagement of Insiders Initiating Energy System Transition. Sustainability 2021, 13, 734. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13020734
Fernqvist N, Lundqvist M. Entrepreneurial Sustainability Engagement of Insiders Initiating Energy System Transition. Sustainability. 2021; 13(2):734. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13020734
Chicago/Turabian StyleFernqvist, Niklas, and Mats Lundqvist. 2021. "Entrepreneurial Sustainability Engagement of Insiders Initiating Energy System Transition" Sustainability 13, no. 2: 734. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13020734
APA StyleFernqvist, N., & Lundqvist, M. (2021). Entrepreneurial Sustainability Engagement of Insiders Initiating Energy System Transition. Sustainability, 13(2), 734. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13020734