The Danish Model for Citizen Engagement in the Renewable Energy Transition (DART)

The project with the full title 'The Danish Model for Citizen Engagement in the Renewable Energy Transition' (DART) is co-financed by the Innovation Fund's Grand Solutions program with DKK 7.5 million.

To avoid climate change, the Danish Government has decided to quadruple the production of renewable energy by 2030. While a vast majority of the Danish population support the renewable energy transition, municipalities and developers still experience substantial skepticism and widespread concern from local citizens and interest groups when wind turbines, solar parks and PtX plants are to be implemented in local sites and communities.

While these challenges have spurred industry and policy makers to perceive citizens living close to renewable energy parks as barriers that risk slowing down the green transition, the DART project takes an alternative approach, which proposes that protesters, by interfering with industrial and political interests, engage in a broader debate about societal change and enact new forms of participatory politics. Thus, the project perceives local resistance not as anti-government or anti-industry, but as venue for citizens to engage in public debates and perform democratic citizenship. With this approach, the purpose is to design a model for engaging citizens and interest groups in the establishment and operation of renewable energy parks. The project is an extension of an already initiated project in the national MissionGreenFuel partnership on the involvement of local communities in the energy field.

The project runs from 2023 to 2026 and is an extension of an already initiated project in the national MissionGreenFuel partnership on the involvement of local communities in the energy field.

 

The legal work package of the DART project focuses on the international, European, and Danish legal framework related to citizen participation in projects that are likely to have an effect on the environment. Specifically, the project analyzes the provisions in this framework in light of the new citizen participation models and seeks to identify areas where the Danish citizen participation law can be modified to encourage constructive citizen participation in the construction of renewable energy infrastructure.

 

 

The legal questions arising under the DART project are addressed by CLIMA at the Faculty of Law in Work Package 3 of the project. The other two work packages are led by the Department of Anthropology (WP1) and the Department of Political Science (WP2) respectively. WP1 will document experiences with citizen engagement as well as develop and test best practice at three Power-to-X projects in Esbjerg, Aalborg, and Bornholm. WP 2 will focus on the use of so-called citizens’ assemblies as a way to allow citizens to discuss and weigh local interests and political concerns

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The DART project is created through the collaboration between CLIMA, the Institute of Anthropology and BehaveGreen, and is conducted through cross-project synergies with the following projects and networks:

RIGHydro – Regulatory Innovation to Incentivize Green Hydrogen

DEEP – Designing Community Collaboration for Sustainable Energy Parks

 

Researchers

Name Title
Search in Name Search in Title
Alberto Barrio Fernandez Postdoc Billede af Alberto Barrio Fernandez
Ana Stella Ebbersmeyer PhD Student Billede af Ana Stella Ebbersmeyer
Beatriz Martinez Romera Head of Centre, Associate Professor Billede af Beatriz Martinez Romera
Meng Zhang Postdoc Billede af Meng Zhang
Viktor Weber Postdoc Billede af Viktor Weber

Funding

Project:  The Danish Model for Citizen Engagement in the Renewable Energy Transition (DART)

Period: Autumn 2023 - Autumn 2026

Contact

Beatriz Martinez RomeraPI Associate Professor
Beatriz Martinez Romera

South Campus, Building 6A.4.09
DK 2300 Copenhagen S
Phone: +45 35 32 31 80
beatriz.martinez.romera@jur.ku.dk

External members:

Name Title E-mail
Simon Westergaard Lex Associate Professor, Ph.D.

simon.lex@anthro.ku.dk

Lars Tønder Professor MSO

lt@ifs.ku.dk