The transition to innovative sustainable energy solutions is technology and society driven. The environmental impact and the economy of current energy sources are seen as key challenges for human progress. Issues like shale gas exploration, geo-political tensions surrounding oil in polar areas, or money flowing towards political instable regimes all point to the need for change.
Changing the energy system is not restricted to developing and replacing technology. It is rather depend on a combination of using and replacing multiple energy technologies, social and institutional rules, entrepreneurship and public policies. A new energy system matches current economic routines and habits in society poorly. Behavioral, organizational or governance drivers for change are critical for spurring transitional change in energy systems. Changing economic (and political) actors’ perspectives, developing new organizational models and designing innovative governance models are considered necessary for change. We seek to explore, understand and design innovative design and implementation models, innovative business cases that work, better policies, and better public debates about energy transition.
CSTM is currently involved in multiple research projects that contribute to new ideas on governance models to spur smart and sustainable energy transition. This manifests in research projects on Smart Grids, Bioenergy, Smart Regions and Cities, Energy and Regulations, Energy and Gender, and Climate Change Mitigation Policy. In its research activities CSTM actively collaborates with international, national and regional partners from both the public and private sectors.
Current projects
- SERENE: Sustainable and integrated energy systems in local communities
The SERENE project aims to develop and demonstrate sustainable, integrated, cost-effective and customer centric solutions for sustainable energy in local communities. The idea is to integrate different energy system carriers and new renewable generation units in local communities, based on their social and technical status today, to meet their energy needs in the coming years. The SERENE project will establish demonstrators in local villages in three European countries – Denmark, the Netherlands and Poland. The experiences from the demonstration sites will be analysed and evaluated for replicability within Europe and worldwide. Technical benchmark models and solutions will be set up together with their business models, and it is evaluated how different legal aspects form the involved countries will affect the possibility for replication. Further, the needed user involvement and their interest to join are evaluated seen from both geographic, social, environmental and economic conditions and characteristics.
In particular, researchers at CSTM will investigate socio-economic, governance and regulatory conditions and obstacles for local energy system innovations. Moreover, they will develop criteria for attractive and viable business models for citizen-centered local integrated energy systems and analyze the social acceptability of such systems for citizens. Eventually, they will be involved in establishing the impacts of these technical and social innovations in local energy systems and creating benchmark models that can be replicated in many local regions, and are acceptable for local citizens
For updates, please follow the project on LinkedIn: SERENE H2020 project: Overview | LinkedIn.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 957682. It runs from 2021 to 2025.
Involved partners next to CSTM:
Dutch partners: Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (UT), Saxion University of Applied sciences, the Aardehuizen community in Olst and technology provider Loqio.
European partners: Aalborg University (AAU), Skanderborg Kommune (SKE), AURA A/S (AURA), Neogrid Technologies Aps (NEOGRID), Suntherm Aps (SUN), Bjerregaard Consulting Aps (BJE), Instytut Maszyn Przeplyywowych Im Roberta Szewalskiego Polskiej Akademii Nauk IMP PAN (IMP), Gmina Przywidz (GMINA), Energa Operator SA (EOR), Pawel Zdzislaw Grabowski (STAY).
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- SUSTENANCE: Sustainable energy system for achieving novel carbon neutral energy communities
The SUSTENANCE project aims to set up sustainable energy systems for achieving novel carbon neutral energy communities. The project focuses on the development of smart technological concepts ensuring a green transition of the energy systems with higher share of local renewable energy and more efficient integrated energy solutions. The projects includes demonstration sites in four countries: Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland and India. The project will show how same technical concepts such as coupling of different energy vectors, storage solutions, demand response, intelligent control schemes and digitalization can be applied to all demonstration cases despite the huge differences in the local conditions and regulations. Road maps will be set up based on these technical solutions together with guidelines for methods for user engagement and ensuring cooperation among the users in relevant cases leading to cooperatives. Finally, business cases will be developed for the different demonstration sites seen from different perspectives, while taking into account the local conditions.
In particular, researchers at CSTM will investigate socio-economic, governance and regulatory factors for optimizing the organizational configuration of more autarkic local integrated energy systems. Moreover, they will develop criteria for attractive and viable business models and strengthened local economies in more autarkic local integrated energy systems; and analyse the social acceptability of such local energy projects for citizens. Finally, they will be involved in establishing the impacts of technical and social innovations in such autarkic local energy systems and in designing benchmark models as standards of excellence and achievement.
For updates, please follow the project on LinkedIn: SUSTENANCE H2020 project: Overview | LinkedIn.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101022587. Additionally, it is funded by DST, Government of India. The projects runs from 2021 to 2025.
Involved partners next to CSTM:
Dutch partners: Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (UT), Saxion University of Applied sciences, the Aardehuizen community in Olst and technology provider Loqio.
International partners: Aalborg University (AAU), Skanderborg Kommune (SKM), Aura Energi (AER), Neogrid (NGD), Suntherm (SNT), Bjerregaard Consultants (BJC), The Institute of Fluid-Flow Machinery of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IMP), Energa-Operator SA (EOR), Stay-ON Energy Management (SON), KEZO Foundation at Polish Academy of Science Research Centre (KEZ), Własnościowa Spóldzielnia Mieszkaniowa im. Adama Mickiewicza w Sopocie (WSM), Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IITB), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (IISc), Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (IITKGP), Indian Institute of Technology, Varanasi (IITBHU), National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli (NITT), National Institute of Technology, Silchar (NITS), Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Allahabad (MMNIT), Innovation Laboratory Energy, Mumbai (ILABE), Gram Oorja, Mumbai (GOR) and Urjalinks (URJA).
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- COMPLEX: Knowledge based climate mitigation systems for a low carbon economy realizing regional climate policy
Current models of climate change and carbon emission assume the immediate past is a reasonable guide to the future. They struggle to represent the complex causal structures and time-asymmetries of many socio-natural systems. COMPLEX will integrate the quasi-classic models of meso-scale processes with our best understanding of fine-grained space-time patterns and the system-flips that are likely to occur in the long interval between now and 2050. It is believed the sub-national region is the key point of entry for studying climate change and its cause-effect interrelations. It is small enough to be sensitive to local factors, large enough to interact with supra-national agencies and stable enough to be historically and culturally distinctive. In addition to undertaking case studies in Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, Spain and Italy, we will develop a suite of modelling tools and decision-support systems to inform national and supra-national policy and support communities across Europe working to make the transition to a low-carbon economy.
- Breaking silos – can the EU’s mission approach for climate-neutral cities accelerate energy transitions? (2023-2025)
Innovative ideas and working methods are needed to speed up sustainable energy transitions in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement. Previous studies have shown the importance of breaking silos between institutions to accelerate this transition. This project investigates how an innovative governance approach - the EU's mission for climate-neutral cities - can increase the pace of energy transitions. For this purpose, CSTM has teamed up with The Swedish Institute of International Affairs and Lund University to study two cities that have been selected to participate in the EU’s mission approach: Stockholm and Amsterdam.
The overarching research question of the project is: To what extent and how can the mission approach contribute to an acceleration of energy transitions in cities? Specifically, in the context of the European Cities Mission it will (1) map out the mission approach, (2) analyse how it works in practice, and (3) evaluate its effects in Stockholm and Amsterdam. In particular, it will investigate if and how the mission approach can break up silos horizontally (for instance within a city administration and public/private actors domestically) and vertically (for instance within transnational networks and international institutions) and how it can impact energy transitions both in terms of reducing emissions but also from the perspective of social justice.
The project will contribute to research, policy, and practice with an understanding of how the mission approach can break up silos and provide approaches and tools to accelerate sustainable energy transitions towards net-zero emissions.
Research team:
- Lisa Sanderink, CSTM
- César Casiano Flores, CSTM
- Naghmeh Nasiritousi, The Swedish Institute of International Affairs (project leader)
- Alexandra Buylova, The Swedish Institute of International Affairs
- Björn Wickenberg, Lund University
- Kes Mccormick, Lund University
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- The Institutional Sources of Energy Transitions: From the Oil Crises to Climate Policy
Why are some governments more effective in promoting economic change? We develop a theory of the institutional sources of economic transformation. Domestic institutions condition the ability of policymakers to impose costs on consumers and producers. We argue that institutions can enable transformation through two central mechanisms: insulation and compensation. The institutional sources of transformation vary across policy types—whether policies impose costs primarily on consumers (demand-side policies) or on producers (supply-side policies). Proportional electoral rules and strong welfare states facilitate demand-side policies, whereas autonomous bureaucracies and corporatist interest intermediation facilitate supply-side policies. We test our theory by leveraging the 1973 oil crisis, an exogenous shock that compelled policymakers to simultaneously pursue transformational change across OECD countries. Panel analysis, case studies, and discourse network analysis support our hypotheses. The findings offer important lessons for contemporary climate change policy and low-carbon transitions.
More information
The Comparative Politics of Climate Change Policy
Presentation (video): Institutional Sources of Economic Transformation Energy Policy from the Oil Crises to Climate ChangeContact
