Konferenceprogram

‘TSI – Kom videre’ closing conference

January 16th 2024, 10AM – 3PM, NaturKraft, Ringkøbing, Denmark

Background:
‘TSI kom videre’ is a project funded by the European Union via the Technical Support Instrument, and implemented by the Samsø Energy Academy, in cooperation with the European Commission.

It aims to support the Central Denmark Region and its 19 municipalities to implement their climate ambition in practice by strengthening their capacity related to:
– climate planning and what infrastructure is needed to achieve the climate goals set in their climate plans and the overall national goals of Denmark.

– translating the climate plans to concrete projects and measures on the ground with the participation of communities, stakeholders and citizens.

These two aspects should go hand in hand, but municipalities find themselves in between developers and large projects on the one hand and their own citizens and societies on the other. To break this impasse, the project contributes with guidance, knowledge and inspiration for social innovation from the pilot municipality of Samsø, one of Central Denmark Regions’ 19 municipalities.

Concept of the conference
With the legally binding 2020 Climate Act, the Danish Parliament committed to reduce national greenhouse gas emissions by 70 per cent by 2030. To achieve this, the country plans to quadruple onshore wind and solar generation ahead.

In its proposal Climate action – joining hands for more green energy from onshore solarand wind farms of 9 October 2023, the government presented its suggestions for the further process of designating sites for 32 energy parks and increasing compensation for neighbours and municipalities.

The rural Central Denmark Region, one of the five regions in Denmark, is already home to numerous wind and solar projects. From the 32 designated energy parks, half are in Central Denmark Region alone. Several very ambitious projects are eyed by developers and the process is disconnected from the societies on the ground. This creates mounting pressure to the region’s 19 municipalities, which lack the right tools to communicate with their societies, translate their climate plans into projects that citizens and stakeholders can relate to and eventually bring their societies on board.

As a result, there is good reason to rethink what is needed for climate plans to be realistic and implemented on the ground. If climate action in Denmark and beyond is not to be confronted by frustrated citizens and costly delays for large-scale projects, it is high time that the framework and conditions of renewable energy development is looked at again and reconsidered.

As a society we must succeed in translating top-down policy frameworks within which the municipalities operate into a different narrative that citizens can relate to and developers must understand and accept. We will only be able to tackle the climate challenge if we manage to avoid growing ‘Not In My Backyard (NiMBY)’ reactions, bottlenecks from the lack of resources at municipality level and problems such as costly delays and projects cancellation and mistrust by the society. These constitute a big challenge ahead, that can be avoided if municipalities get from the start the resources, the right set of skills and the tools needed for the task.

At DKGREENTRAN project’s closing conference on January 16th, Region Midt, Ringkøbing Skjern municipality and the Samsø Energy Academy invite to a themed day about citizen co-ownership and the difficult balance between municipality, developer and citizen.

Activating climate plans requires public participation.

How do the municipalities solve this task?

The Samsø Energy Academy is bringing good ideas that already exist from best practices, like the island of Samsø, and is inviting participants to share their experiences and enter into debates about what could make the climate work of municipalities more productive, more inclusive, more realistic, and more fun.

The event will take place in NaturKraft, Naturparken 10, Ringkøbing, Denmark.

Sign up to the conference here!