Benjamin Schmid

University of Galway | NUI Galway · Department of Geography

The report presents a detailed analysis of the major political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal conditions that shape the emergence, manifestations and transformations of energy citizenship at EU level. The report and resulting PESTEL analysis will serve as the reference point for the energy citizenship as observed in diffe...

The importance of social and institutional innovations in the energy transition has become increasingly evident in recent years. The quest for new institutional arrangements and social relations has been accompanied by the proliferation of new concepts: Energy democracy, energy justice, energy poverty and energy literacy are interrogating and openi...

This chapter explores the existence of various sociotechnical imaginaries—these are shared visions of desirable futures—in community energy initiatives in Switzerland, thus going beyond a mere techno-economic approach. By focusing on what community energy initiatives aspire to and how these aspirations translate into present-day performances, this...

Die direkte Beteiligung von Bürgerinnen und Bürgern wird immer deutlicher als zentraler Baustein für das Gelingen der Energiewende als gesamtgesellschaftliches Vorhaben erkannt. In der Europäischen Union werden mittels zweier EU-Richtlinien sogenannte «Erneuerbaren-Energie-Gemeinschaften» und «Bürgerenergiegemeinschaften» explizit anerkannt und gef...

Présentation des travaux de recherche de SONNET sur les coopératives d'énergie renouvelable dans le cadre des "Dernières actualités de la recherche énergétique en Suisse romande" (DARE) – une série de l’Association des entreprises électriques suisses (AES) dédiée à l'échange de savoir entre industrie et recherche en Suisse romande. Disponible en l...

How is the SIE-field defined? In the SIE-field under study, we focus on energy competitions that happen at the city level. With the term city-level competitions for sustainable energy we refer to diverse formats in which participants strive to rank themselves, gain or win something in order to foster sustainable energy pathways. There are differ...

In SONNET, we investigate the development of the SIE-field and its initiatives, called renewable energy cooperatives (REC). With RECs we refer to organisational models through which citizens jointly own means of and participate in renewable energy production. Primarily, RECs aim to finance and operate renewable energy power plants but can also...

In this report, Swiss Sustainable Finance explores the broad range of finance solutions at hand to support the transition to a climate-friendly economy. The extensive compendium, prepared by SSF in cooperation with its network, highlights 16 specific finance instruments and approaches for a low-carbon economy, and illustrates their implementation t...

Background: Energy cooperatives are a prominent and common form of community energy. Community energy has the potential to increase actor diversity and local acceptance of renewable energies and has therefore been highlighted to be conducive to energy transitions. While research has recognized the importance of both the national and the local gove...

Participation of citizens in local energy decisions is increasingly recognized as helpful for a successful decentralized energy transition. In this article, we focus on energy cooperatives in which private individuals jointly develop facilities to generate energy from renewable sources, thus involving citizens both politically and economically. Foc...

This PhD thesis presents the first comprehensive analysis of energy cooperatives in Switzerland—the production of renewable energy organized on a cooperative basis. Drawing on approaches of interactive and multi-level governance, the conditions are examined under which energy cooperatives operate and contribute to the Swiss energy transition. The r...

Investment decisions by power utilities significantly shape sustainable energy systems. While it is known that different political factors influence investment decisions, the interaction of these factors remains unclear. Using a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis of 22 cases in 19 Swiss cantons, this study analyses which combinations of pol...

Swiss Energy Law (EnG) does not contain specific targets for expansion of consumer (co-)ownership of RES, but it does contain several provisions that encourage and support such (co-)ownership schemes. One of them is an explicit authorization of self-consumption, which states that producers can consume self-generated electricity entirely or partiall...

In den vergangenen Jahren sind in der Schweiz, wie in vielen anderen Ländern, zivilgesellschaftlich geprägte Organisationen entstanden, die den Ausbau erneuerbarer Energien vorantreiben. Forschungsergebnisse bestätigen vorteilhafte Wirkungen dieser Art von Organisationen auf den Ausbau erneuerbarer Energien: u. a. verbesserte gesellschaftliche Akze...