Energy transitions involve more than infrastructure. Perhaps the most important question is: What new urban quality will the energy transition allow us to produce?
Big systems touch upon people’s living environments on the level of the district, where the energy transition affects neighborhoods, streets, and dwellings. This is also the level at which individual interests – reduced energy consumption means lower energy bills – are potentially in line with the public interest, which is: the success of the energy transition. It is the level, furthermore, at which collaborative action can be organized and at which the energy transition can be a catalyst.
picture: Frank Hanswijk
Energy Neighborhood
What, then, are the right conditions for an energy neighborhood? A neighborhood in which the energy transition not only takes concrete shape, but in which it can also lever a safe, healthy, inclusive neighborhood with opportunities for everyone? What will that energy neighborhood look like? How can we organize the necessary and large-scale energy saving, producing, and sharing (of both electricity and heat) at the neighborhood level? Who has to make the first move, and how will that move be underwritten? How can energy cooperatives and local initiatives become driving forces behind a major transition? In other words: are there prospects for action that both energy cooperatives and citizens can use to flesh out the energy transition?
These are the questions that are central to tonight's public discussion. We will talk about the what: what is actually on the table? And about the how: how can we make it happen, how do we get things done?
The first results of the research by design the IABR–Atelier Rotterdam carried out into the Energy Neighborhood concept in and with Bospolder-Tussendijken provide starting points for the discussion. We will also address other examples from Rotterdam and beyond.
Program
An introduction of the focus of IABR–Atelier Rotterdam on Energy Districts and the work in Bospolder-Tussendijken.
A keynote by Dirk Holemans (coordinator at Oikos).
Presentation of several cases:
- Grassroots Business Lab, by Jan Janjoost Jullens (Studio Wolfpack)
- Next Generation Residential Area Lage Land/Prinsenland, by Erik Hoeflaak (Woonstad)
- Living Lab Palenstein Aardgasvrij, by Frank Slingerland (Municipality of Zoetermeer)
And with contributions by Astrid Kockelkoren (councilor Groen Links) and Donald van den Akker (program manager Platform31).
Moderated by: Jelte Boeijenga
location: HAKA Building
date: June 15
time: 10:00 - 12:30 am (doors open 9:30 am)
language: Dutch
