Dr Gill Seyfang (School of Environmental Sciences, UEA) has just launched a new three-year research project ‘Community Innovation for Sustainable Energy’, which is a collaboration with researchers at SPRU, University of Sussex, and is funded by Research Councils UK’s Energy Programme and the European Centre Laboratories for Energy Efficiency Research (ECLEER) of EdF Energy.

Recent years have seen a surge in interest and activity in small-scale, sustainable energy projects led by local communities. Examples include solar water heating clubs and insulation clubs, which provide mutual support for system installation; energy awareness and behaviour networks, which provide guidance and reassurance to neighbours on energy matters relevant to them; and co-operatively-owned small-scale renewable energy systems, such as micro-hydro and wind energy.

These ‘grassroots innovations’ for sustainable development are the subject of a programme of research led by Dr Seyfang. In contrast to mainstream business greening, grassroots innovations operate in civil society and social enterprise arenas, but typically receive little support to develop learning and infrastructure, to grow and scale up their activities. This research aims to study how these initiatives operate, learn lessons from successful exemplars, and uncover useful lessons to help policymakers support such activities.

There have been a number of initiatives to promote and support community energy projects in recent years. Most recently, in late 2009, the Government’s Low Carbon Community Challenge attracted over 500 expressions of interest. It joins a dynamic portfolio of policies helping innovative community projects

The project is being carried out by a team of researchers from SPRU at the University of Sussex and CSERGE at the University of East Anglia who have experience in the analysis of grassroots innovation for sustainable development. We will draw upon the findings of our research to develop with practitioners a number of Foresight scenarios for community energy in the UK.

In addition, Dr Seyfang’s Leverhulme-funded project on complementary currencies recently brought together currency activists from around the world for an expert meeting, held at UEA London (see box).

For more information: http://www.grassrootsinnovations.org.

Current Innovations for Sustainability  Researchers from ENV held a successful workshop in London that bought together a range of practitioners and academics from the field of complementary currencies from across Europe and beyond. The Grassroots Innovations: Complementary Currency project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and led by Dr Gill Seyfang (ENV), is exploring the diffusion and replication of complementary currency systems. These are alternative forms of money, such as the Brixton Pound, green loyalty reward cards, or volunteering ‘time banks’. The workshop at the UEA London offices bought together representatives from a range of different currency schemes. Representatives discussed initiatives that were being implemented in various European countries as well as South America and Asia. Senior Research Associate Noel Longhurst commented, “The workshop was intended to serve two purposes. The first was to discuss the current developments in the complementary currency field, exploring the latest models and trends. The complementary currency field is fairly fragmented and it is difficult to get reliable data on the specifics of different systems. Many participants were unaware of the other systems that we bought together. The second objective was for us to explore some of the conceptual framework with participants, before we engage in a stage of deeper empirical work. On both counts the workshop was a great success with both participants and ourselves benefiting from the exchange of information. “