Do you want to contribute to an advocacy initiative aiming to influence decisions at the UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) taking place in Glasgow in November? Do you want to have the story of your energy community featured in a global research report that will be published ahead of COP26? If the answer is yes, you may be interested in the call for contributions launched by Let Communities Lead.

Let Communities Lead is a knowledge-based advocacy initiative that aims to bring together community leaders, organizations, researchers and political leaders to inspire policy makers to support energy transition initiatives led by grassroots actors and focused on the needs of local communities.

The immediate goal of the initiative is to publish a research report in September, ahead of COP26, to inform policymakers on how best to leverage community-led energy innovation to combat the effects of climate change. The report aims to encourage policymakers to strengthen frontline communities in their economic and social development.

The report will feature stories from all over the world and an analysis of pathways to address the socio-economic challenges faced by frontline communities, which are further compounded by climate change. It will also highlight the need for policy, finance, governance, consultation and technology requirements of local energy transition initiatives that simultaneously advance social, economic and climate goals.

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How to share your community story

Let Communities Lead is now collecting the stories from the ground that will compose the research report. The contributions will also be hosted online, creating an open access knowledge database.

The stories should be a concise narrative of around 1.000 words highlighting social, economic and ecological benefits generated by community-based energy systems and projects. While each story will be unique and based on the authors’ personal experience, they all should reflect on the following issues:

  • Key socio-political, technical and organizational arrangements and capacities in the community necessary to create the benefits and avoid negative consequences.
  • Actors and capacities critical to sustain and enhance benefits, overcome burdens and avoid negative consequences in the long-term.
  • Policy and financing mechanisms that enabled or obstructed the project.

Stories are welcome from all regions/countries and from individuals or entities with direct knowledge of community-based energy projects. The research aims to be representative of the global diversity in knowledge and efforts. Hence, submissions can be done in any language, with a request to include a summary and key lessons in English. The deadline to submit stories to be part of the research report is 30 July 2021. Later submissions are welcome too, but they will not be included in the report.

Community leaders and researchers interested in submitting a story, sharing suggestions or asking any additional information, can write to Saurabh Biswas (saurabh.biswas@asu.edu) or Davi E. François (davi.francois@kit.edu).