Sustainability 2015, 7, 1900-1931; doi:10.3390/su7021900 OPEN ACCESS sustainability ISSN 2071-1050 www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability Article Local Governments Supporting Local Energy Initiatives: Lessons from the Best Practices of Saerbeck (Germany) and Lochem (The Netherlands) Thomas Hoppe 1,*, Antonia Graf 2, Beau Warbroek 1,3, Imke Lammers 1 and Isabella Lepping 1 1 Department of Technology and Governance for Sustainability (CSTM), Institute for Innovation and Governance Studies (IGS), Faculty of Behavioral, Management and Social Studies (BMS), University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands; E-Mails:
[email protected] (B.W.);
[email protected] (I.L.);
[email protected] (I.L.) 2 Institute for Political Science, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Scharnhorststrasse 100, 48151 Münster, Germany; E-Mail:
[email protected] 3 University Campus Fryslân (UCF), Sophialaan 1, 8911 AE Leeuwarden, The Netherlands * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail:
[email protected]; Tel.: +31-53-489-3242. Academic Editor: Tan Yigitcanlar Received: 22 December 2014 / Accepted: 3 February 2015 / Published: 11 February 2015 Abstract: The social dimension of the transition to a low carbon economy is a key challenge to cities. The establishment of local energy initiatives (LEIs) has recently been attracting attention. It is of great importance to draw lessons from best practices when LEIs have been facilitated by local governments and made a substantial contribution to greening local energy systems. The main research questions in this paper are: What lessons can be drawn from successful local low carbon energy transition cases, and which strategies proved successful to support LEIs? We have used analytical notions from the Strategic Niche Management (SNM) and grassroots innovation literature to analyze two best-practice cases: Saerbeck (Germany) and Lochem (The Netherlands).