CO-DESIGNING ACTION PLANS FOR A JUST ENERGY TRANSITION IN RURAL AREAS

CO-DESIGNING ACTION PLANS FOR A JUST ENERGY TRANSITION IN RURAL AREAS

Community Group "Energy Transition in Rural Areas" 1st meeting activity results

Allies

Achieve a meaningful participation

Communication

Achiving stakeholders' sustained participation

Identify all relevant stakeholders

Engage stakeholders

Identifystakeholders

Getting relevant stakeholders involved

Resources

Data source: collaborative activity results and further discussions

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How we did this

STRATEGIES AND TOOLS TO REACH THE RELEVANT STAKEHOLDERS

More about allies

Do some fieldwork and engage local allies. Plan time to work with communities considering local timing and rhythms. Plan local events. Prioritize in person activities. Align dissemination and communication campaigns. Plan accessible venues: near, clear, easy to participate. Desing tailored workshops with experts and stakeholders groups (e.g. youth within energy community members). Promote trust and avoid consultation fatigue by offering a meaningful participation.

More about communication

More about meaningful participation

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HAVE ALL THE STAKEHOLDERS ON BOARD BY OFFERING MEANINGUFUL PARTICIPATION

all afected stakeholders

Have on the room

preliminary analysis

Make a Avoid the Promote community-led energy solutions and avoid the sense of not having Improve Offer practical guidance/

More about communication

power imbalance

real impact

processes

capacity building

Resource: Checklist for authorities developed by the Fast & Fair Renewables and Grid Initiative

Go to forms of communication and narratives

Go to strategies and tools to reach stakeholders

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FORMS OF COMMUNICATION AND NARRATIVES

accesible language and messages

Use Inform about Ensure not to tokenise the underrepresented groups. Avoid Use social media to engage youth.

viable and realistic options and benefits

power imbalance

Go to strategies and tools to reach stakeholders

Go to meaningful participation

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WHO DID THIS?

MORE ABOUT THE PROCESS

Questionnaire about energy transition plans co-desgin challenges and solutions

Mural online activity to find solutions

Summary of the challenges

Summary of challenges and solutions

Energy Transition in Rural Areas Community Group

Acces here to the interactive mural where we collected challenges and solutions

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Start by understanding the community:

• needs
• threads
• resources

and how these can be used to achieve the goal.

Find human and financial resources

• Direct funding: EU projects (LIFE, Horizon EU, PRIMA, Interreg...)
• Create associations with win-win situations: e. g. an association of businesses, with the support of a National Sustainable Energy Agency, can organise themselves to set up an Energy Community as a way of improving their own economic situation.

Find local allies and existing participation spaces

• Collaborate with existing networks, local associations and groups.
• Find and engage local leaders.
• Make local people multipliers, work with volunteers.

Examples of youth engagement allies

Examples of underrepresented groups allies

Reach out all relevant stakeholders identified

Preliminary work:

• Define "sufficient outreach"
• Identify participation barriers for each stakeholder (e.g. work overload, lack of time, lack of resources/awareness/knowledge…)
• Raise awareness with communication campaigns and in-person events.

Strategies and tools to reach stakeholders

• Involve the community in decisions, knowledge-building and the development of the project.

• Plan short-term actions that make sense for vulnerable people.

• Focus on actions and positive results. Avoid the sensation of it is all theoretical.

• Implement actions, make them real. Talk about temporality

• Make the benefits to themselves and their community clear. Provide people with concrete, immediate solutions to the problems they face (e.g. energy prices – negotiated contracts and savings; health issues – indoor humidity, air quality and mould development).

• Identify success cases from other municipalities and communicate the specific benefits to interested municipalities. The impact becomes more tangible by disseminating practices from other contexts and showing what worked and what didn't, especially for projects at the pilot or prototype level.

Identify all relevant stakeholders

Including underrepresented groups

• Start by defining relevant stakeholders (e.g. local authorities, regional-national administration, associations, citizens, underepresented groups sucha as youth or vulnerable citizens...)

How?

Strategies and tools

• Ask yourself if you have them iteratively throughout the process.

See more on how to identify and engage relevant stakeholders on the home page.

• Design capacity building programmes for local authorities, tailored to local circumstances.

• Plan workshops and participatory instances such as working groups.

• Provide educational material-shared platform where materials can be accessed at any time for any stakeholder.

• Include space for networking to enrich the overall experience.

• Offer practical resources to local authorities. E.g.: for mediation between competing interests for local authorities, the Checklist developed by the Fast & Fair Renewables and Grid Initiative (find the link on the previous page).

• Use a non-instrumental dialogue (i.e. equal exchange of ideas).

• Ensure epistemic symmetry (the ideas of all the stakeholders are considered equally valuable).

• Engage local knowledge.

• Share some information materials in advance to set an equal starting point for everyone.

• Focus on taking action and achieving positive results. Avoid the impression that it is all theoretical.

• Identify success cases from other municipalities and communicate the specific benefits to interested municipalities. The impact becomes more tangible by disseminating practices from other contexts and showing what worked and what didn't, especially for projects at the pilot or prototype level.

• Give people concrete, inmediate solutions to the problems they face (e.g. energy prices – negotiated contracts and savings; health issues – indoor humidity, air quality and mould development).

• Talk about temporality.

Successful co-design that responds to community needs

• Gather feedback to adapt the approach.

• Peer learning on how to make it relevant for all stakeholders.

• Invite experts when need for technical, practical or legal issues.

• Avoid administrative complexity and long procedures.

• Make them aware how important is their implication

• Use the local language.

• Use non-technical words.

• State simple messages.

• Design an appealing communication approach, such as storytelling.

Find local allies and existing participation spaces

• Collaborate with existing networks, local associations and groups.
• Find and engage local leaders.
• Make local people multipliers, work with volunteers.

Examples of youth engagement allies

Examples of underrepresented groups engagement allies

• Use a non-instrumental dialogue (i.e. equal exchange of ideas).

• Ensure epistemic symmetry (the ideas of all the stakeholders are considered equally valuable).

• Engage local knowledge.

• Share some information materials in advance to set an equal starting point for everyone.

¿What is Energy Transition in Rural Areas?

Energy Transition in Rural Areas is a Comunity of Practice where those of us who are dedicated to facilitating a just rural energy transition (policymakers, civil organisations, reserachers, public or private business...) share knowledge, experiencies and tools to empower municipalities in rural areas to co-design energy policies with a social perspective. It is a Community Group hosted on the Rural Pact platform of the European Commission, originating from the ENTRACK project, which was funded under the EU LIFE programme. The group was established in winter 2025. We hold three to four virtual meetings a year and use the discussion section on the platform to stay connected, sharing resources, ideas and calls.

You can join the group or find out more here

At our first meeting on 12 December, we worked in small groups to suggest solutions to the challenges summarised on the mural. After that, we heard testimonies from research projects and held a whole-group debate.

We received lots of challenges and some solutions. We summarised these on an interactive mural, which we will use as a basis for the online session discussion activity.

We send a registration form for our first online meeting that included 2 questions for the inscribed: - obstacles when co-designing - solutions encountered

We made this Genially presentation collecting all the ideas from the interactive mural and the posterior dicussion.