In the shift towards the Big Society, it is widely proclaimed that citizen participation and citizens’ initiatives are indispensable to maintaining services that used to be run by local or regional governments. Despite the increased interest in citizens’ initiatives, research has scarcely debated what …

A year later, in 2013, the Westerkwartier Area Cooperative was established – a new form of cooperation at the regional level, involving hundreds of dairy farmers, other SMEs, Terra MBO as the representative of the knowledge institutions in the region, the National Forest Service in the Netherlands (‘Staatsbosbeheer’), …

Biogas infrastructure from farm-scale to regional scale, line-pack storage in biogas grids. The number of local and regional initiatives encouraging the production and use of regional produced energy grows. In these new developments biogas can play a role, as a producer of energy, but also in balancing …

http://dx.doi.org/10.14261/postit/F6BBB081-6FD4-43B9-801915E45153D068Keynote speech. In 2015 and 2016, Saxion University of Applied Sciences organized the 2nd and 3rd edition of the Regional Innovation and Entrepreneurship Conference (RIEC).In our region, "De Stedendriehoek" (Cities in the Triangle – …

The transformation from the current energy system to a decentralized renewable energy system requires the transformation of communities into energy neutral or even energy producing communities. Increasingly, citizens become 'prosumers' and pool their resources to start a local energy initiative. In this …

The volume of biogas produced in agricultural areas is expected to increase in coming years. An increasing number of local and regional initiatives show a growing interest in decentralized energy production, wherein biogas can play a role. Biogas transport from production sites to user, i.e. a CHP, boiler …

Active and Healthy Ageing in EU and the regional approach in the Northern Netherlands. In the Northern Netherlands a regional Healthy Ageing innovation network has been developed in which many partners in research and education, health and welfare, business, and regional authorities have been collaborating …

In the nineties of the last century, a lot of (ICT) incubators started in the Netherlands, many private (GorillaPark, Ant Factory, Lost Boys and Newconomy), some public, such as Twinning. Most of them stopped early this century or gone bankrupt. From 2005 university incubators like YesDelft!, Erasmus …

There is growing realisation amongst local communities that the organizations and societies within which they live and work need to become more sustainable in order to secure their social, environmental and economic futures (Coyle 2011, Müller et al. 2011). The underlying motivations vary but are often …

More and more local bottom-up energy initiatives are emerging. Those involved encounter many barriers during the realization of their ideas. As the generation of renewable energy is mostly included, these local initiatives contribute to the targets set at regional, national & EU level. At the same time, …