Community energy can be conceptualized as a social movement, which aims to develop a sustainable, democratic, and localist energy system. Community energy organizations often take the form of cooperatives and strive for a high level of participation at the neighborhood level. Recently, community energy …

presentation on the WIREX annual congres of the EU Week of innovative Regions in which we discussed the pilots in the Northern Netherlands

In een proces met een groot aantal stakeholders heeft het lectoraat een inhoudelijk programma vorm gegeven om uiteindelijk tot een regionale ontwikkelingsvisie te komen

Presentatie in workshop op mondiale congres EAIE in Sevilla, gericht op de regionalisering van het HBO-onderwijs in Noord-Nederland , de Hanzehogeschool in het bijzonder

The goal of this paper is to present the emergence of a new cooperative model for sustainable regional development through social enterprise, rooted in a historical context of societal change in the Netherlands. Our case study is the Gebiedscoöperatie Westerkwartier (GCW), a large-scale area and integrated …

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’), …

Het lectoraat Duurzaam Coöperatief Ondernemen aan de Hanzehogeschool Groningen pleit voor een regionale regie via ‘Gebiedscoöperaties’, zodat lokale en sectorale initiatieven elkaar kunnen versterken

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 …