Kristian Borch

How can municipalities foster community support for renewable energy? Should Denmark’s official planning model be modified? This paper explores municipal community engagement strategies and proposes a planning model based on pre-project strategic municipal planning and community engagement.Municipalities as key actors in the planning and implementation of renewable energy often face issues with social acceptance. Community engagement is a model for building active acceptance (i. e., community support). The concrete role of municipalities in fostering community support is less well understood. Looking at Denmark, we evaluate the role of public participation and community engagement in the current planning model. We then apply a qualitative research approach to explore how three Danish municipalities have worked with community engagement. The approaches range from a good collaborative practice to a new planning model institutionalizing engagement. Engagement before and during project initialization is emphasized in contrast to the official model that often starts with projects pre-defined by developers. We recommend modifications to the planning model that place the responsibility for strategic planning and project initialization with the municipality and local communities. There is a need to recognize such planning and engagement efforts required before project initialization, followed by eventual integration into the regulatory framework.

The Nordic countries have well-established community energy traditions. However, the extent to which these traditions align with the European Union’s definition of energy communities varies from country to country.The EU’s Clean Energy Package introduced renewable and citizen energy communities (RECs/CECs) to strengthen citizen participation in electricity markets. Nordic countries, however, have long-standing traditions of community-based energy provision, including district heating cooperatives, small hydropower schemes, and wind cooperatives. This article examines how nationally embedded energy models in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden align with or diverge from the legal and governance criteria defined in the Renewable Energy Directive RED II and the Internal Electricity Market Directive IEMD. Using a comparative institutional framework, the study analyses regulatory design, ownership structures, and system configurations shaping implementation. The findings show that regulatory conditions, rather than cooperative traditions alone, determine alignment. Finland demonstrates high compatibility, Denmark and Sweden partial alignment, and Norway limited alignment, being outside the EU framework. The study highlights how institutional path dependencies condition the practical realisation of EU energy community provisions.

The COPPER project aims to develop new concepts for how we can plan areas and energy developments to establish so-called “Positive Energy Districts” (PED) (https://ruralis

Policy Highlights: To achieve the recommendation stated in the chapter title, we propose the following: Ensure the follow-up and implementation of EU policy measures, including by conducting quality assessments and introducing national community energy targets. Foster institutional allies at local and regional levels. Provide access to and capacities for using digital planning tools. Nurture knowledge and method integration across STEM and SSH disciplines to develop practices and tools to effectively implement community-led initiatives.

The internationally accepted goal of eliminating climate gas emissions implies substantial investments in renewable energy (RE) facilities. This will inevitably lead to major impacts on landscapes. Landscape concerns linked to RE facilities are already leading to controversies in many local communities. In this article, we focus on the question of landscape democracy related to the establishment of RE facilities. Based on recommendations from the European Landscape Convention, an analytical framework is presented identifying three main dimensions of landscape democracy, followed by an overview of arrangements, procedures, and methods that are or may be used to encourage democracy. The procedures and methods are analyzed based on examples from Denmark and Norway. This is followed by an analysis of decision levels with a special focus on the principle of subsidiarity. Finally, recommendations are presented to strengthen landscape democracy in relation to the installation of RE facilities.

There is need to better understand the trends and future challenges influencing the marine and coastal environments and identify the opportunities to develop innovative sustainability-oriented solutions to address these. Alongside mainstream decision support tools used in environmental management and conservation sciences, foresight techniques provide comprehensive and well-rounded information and knowledge about likely developments in the long-term future. This study uses a horizon scanning exercise to explore emerging signals and trends of future developments and innovation for the sustainable development of the blue economy looking towards 2030. It derives a series of global developments, challenges and opportunities relating to the blue economy from a review of high-level international reports and studies. Through a workshop conducted with 29 scientists and researchers based in maritime universities in six countries in Europe, the study identifies and prioritizes emerging signals and trends considered of high impact for a sustainability transition. The outputs include a synthesis of 11 global developments in the blue economy and 7 cross-cutting trends and trend projections. These may be valuable to marine scientists as a source of inspiration for a future research agenda or can be used as evidence for decision- and policymakers to deal with future uncertainties about the growth of the blue economy.

The aim of this paper is to provide a new perspective on the conditions for the multiple dimensions of concerns and to understand why some wind power projects run smoothly, while others lead to unexpected outcomes due to local resistance. The paper considers three Danish wind farm developments with different planning difficulties, from “smooth” to intensified resistance and conflicts between local communities and the planning authority. To better understand the different planning pathways, we use a research framework where social acceptance is viewed from a conflict management theory perspective, with a focus on the uniqueness and different dimensions of conflicts. The paper discusses how the framing of the planning system considers specific types of tangible concerns, while more intangible concerns are neglected, and how this leads to escalating conflicts. The paper is concluded with several policy recommendations on how to avoid conflicts and how authorities and politicians should reflect on their own agency in provoking conflicts, which can be avoided by proactively involving affected communities at early stages.

The internationally accepted goals of eliminating climate gas emissions implies substantial investments in renewable energy (RE) facilities. This will inevitably lead to major impacts on landscapes. Landscape concerns linked to RE facilities are already leading to controversies in many local communities. In this article, we focus on the question of landscape democracy related to the establishment of RE facilities. Based on recommendations from the European Landscape Convention, an analytical framework is presented identifying three main dimensions of landscape democracy, followed by an overview of arrangements, procedures and methods that are or may be used to encourage democracy. The procedures and methods are analysed based on examples from Denmark and Norway. This is followed by an analysis of decision levels with a special focus on the principle of subsidiarity. Finally, recommendations are presented to strengthen landscape democracy in relation to the installation of RE-facilities.

The aim of this paper is to provide a new perspective on the conditions for the multiple dimensions of concerns, and to understand why some wind power projects run smoothly while others lead to unexpected outcomes due to local resistance. The paper described how multiple community concerns about wind power project planning can be described using conflict management theory and by using different procedures to handle tangible and intangible concerns. Policy recommendations are given on how: to minimise overflowing and the risk of the conflicts; to avoid “boxing” community concerns in categories; to give more attention to the intangible and less calculable concerns; to secure appropriate and early planning with proactive involvement of local communities.