The Power of Co-Creation in the Energy Transition—DART Model in Citizen Energy Communities Projects

Bożena Ryszawska, Magdalena Rozwadowska, Roksana Ulatowska, Marcin Pierzchała and Piotr Szymański
Additional contact information
Bożena Ryszawska: Department of Corporate Finance and Public Finance, Faculty of Economics and Finance, Wroclaw University of Economics and Business, 53-345 Wrocław, Poland
Magdalena Rozwadowska: Department of Corporate Finance and Public Finance, Faculty of Economics and Finance, Wroclaw University of Economics and Business, 53-345 Wrocław, Poland
Roksana Ulatowska: Department of Social Sciences and Humanities, Tischner European University, 31-864 Kraków, Poland
Marcin Pierzchała: Foundation for the Development of Social Research, 31-060 Kraków, Poland
Piotr Szymański: Department of Corporate Finance and Public Finance, Faculty of Economics and Finance, Wroclaw University of Economics and Business, 53-345 Wrocław, Poland

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 17, 1-29

Abstract: Successful energy transformation is interconnected with greater citizenry participation as prosumers. The search for novel solutions to implement the transition to renewable energy that will neutralize the barriers to this process, e.g., the reluctance of citizens to get involved, lack of trust in decision-makers and lack of co-ownership of energy projects, is inevitable as a part of the bottom-up process. Energy communities have vast potential to scale up Renewable Energy projects. Due to the fact that in Poland, establishing citizen energy communities in the cities is not allowed, the key success factor of energy transformation is to engage housing cooperatives and other housing communities in this process. A similar legal framework prevents communities from establishing themselves in the Czech Republic and Hungary. The research problem of this paper is to identify determinants of the co-creation process in Renewable Energy project activation at the housing cooperative level. The aim is to identify key conditions that housing cooperatives should establish in order to successfully undertake Renewable Energy project implementation using a co-creation approach. The literature study shows that the term “co-creation” is not often used in energy transition projects, although many local energy transitions are indeed co-created, unfortunately not in a structured methodical manner. In the research, we apply the DART (Dialogue, Access, Risk, Transparency) model as the framework to conduct the analysis. The study has been carried out using quantitative and qualitative research methods and based on primary and secondary data. Our findings indicate that considering the different areas of the DART model, co-creation was most visible in the area of dialogue-communication between cooperative authorities and its members, while it was least visible in the area of transparency. Based on the results pertaining to the implemented project, the researchers postulate the inclusion of factors beyond the DART model that further shape the co-creation process.

Keywords: co-creation; value co-creation; DART model; citizen energy community; housing cooperative (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/17/5266/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/17/5266/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:14:y:2021:i:17:p:5266-:d:621594

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().