Building a community – Conclusions from ePLANET Stakeholders Forums

Why creating Stakeholders Forums?

One of ePLANET project objective was to create a transparent and coherent harmonised information-sharing platform and a database of energy transition plans which includes best practices and indicators of energy transition measures. In addition to the creation of the platform, another aim was to develop a collaborative framework for the development and updating of Energy Transition plans.

While the consortium included the necessary expertise to develop the proposed tools and activities, ePLANET approach was to take into consideration best practices and opinions from other experts working in the energy transition governance and digitalization of measures and actions. Stakeholders Forums had the objective to reach a continuous engagement of key stakeholders to gather their feedback on the different tasks of the project and more particularly on the development of the platform.

What exactly are we talking about?

The Stakeholders Forums were organised as a series of 12 online meetings taking place between February 2022 and July 2024.

The initial sessions are intended to increase the capacity of the consortium partners to successfully establish and develop the ePLANET tools. During these initial sessions, some experts and key actors on energy transition digitalization, harmonization and governance have provided the consortium with their interesting feedback, best practices and insights on the subject. Progressively, the forums also fulfilled the objective of sharing our own achievements and best practices to potential users and beneficiaries.

The forums tackled a wide variety of topics and some where recorded. Don’t hesitate to watch them if you missed them, it will give you a taste of it’s like to be part of the ePLANET community!

• SF1 – Data visualization tools to support multi-level governance, maximize impact and engage citizens – The example of TerriStory
• SF2 – Data visualization tools to support multi-level governance, maximize impact and engage citizens – The example of EnergeeWatch
• SF3 – From multilevel governance to multilevel climate action
• SF4 – ePLANET platform Use Cases
• SF5 – A regional perspective on data collection and supporting data treatment
• SF6 – Data integration and configuration of SECAPs
• SF7 – Multilevel governance from a regional perspective
• SF8 – Scaling-up energy savings
• SF9 – Energy transition from the community point of view
• SF10 – Investigating the PV potential of public buildings
• SF11 – Financing the energy transition
• SF12 – Best practices from ePLANET repository

How did we achieve our objectives?

To reach our objective we mobilised ePLANET consortium networks to select and invite key experts and sister-projects or initiatives working in the energy transition governance and digitalization energy data.

We also took advantage of our consortium contacts to send targeted invitations to people working in the same field and who might be interested in ePLANET project developments. Progressively, through a snowball effect, the first participants invited other interested organisations and experts from their own network. This is how the ePLANET community expanded.

This philosophy, which consist of drawing inspiration from others, their experiences and their best practices in order to develop new successful projects was not restricted to the Stakeholders Forum. It was also reflected in our final event where we invited sister-projects to give their perspective on multilevel governance, energy data digitalization and citizen engagement. Read our dedicated article to know more.