Master’s Thesis in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability (SL2403) A Facilitating Platform for Energy & Climate Change Programs – a Case within Municipalities in Southeast Sweden Rajeev Akireddy, Yuan Zhi, Evelyne Lyatuu School of Engineering Blekinge Institute of Technology Karlskrona, Sweden 2011 Primary Supervisor: Dr. Henrik Ny Secondary Supervisor: Marco Valente i A Facilitating Platform for Energy & Climate Change Programs – a Case within Municipalities in Southeast Sweden Rajeev Akireddy, Yuan Zhi, Evelyne Lyatuu School of Engineering Blekinge Institute of Technology Karlskrona, Sweden 2011 Thesis submitted for completion of Master of Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability, Blekinge Institute of technology, Karlskrona, Sweden. Abstract: Focus on municipal level planning has increased in the recent years. Municipal governments are primarily responsible for such planning and they do have the biggest responsibility of driving the entire municipality towards sustainability. In this research project we provide a study on some of the gaps and challenges in the current procedures faced by a few municipalities within Southeast Sweden with respect to Energy and climate change planning and implementation. It was observed that the current engagement practices, communication, and alignment of goals could potentially hinder the municipality from achieving the overall goals of sustainability. Furthermore, a complementing facilitating platform was suggested that would give municipal governments an opportunity to intervene and address some of these gaps and challenges to establish structure and control on activities, towards a sustainable municipality. Keywords: municipality, energy, climate change, policy, gaps, challenges, strategy i Statement of Contribution This thesis was the result of our interests and emergent opportunities, the topic emerged from the research team’s strong shared interest in discovering newer approaches for municipalities working on Energy and climate change issues. Each member of the team played a key role in the investigation and discussion during the research design phase. Research methods were then carried out in the forms of literature review, interviews, and feedback sessions. Rajeev initiated the relationship with Karlskrona Municipality’s Energy planning department, and the team organized meetings over the course of four months, focusing on capturing the current planning and implementation processes and challenges at Karlskrona municipality’s. Yuan focussed on the literature review, data capture and consolidation. Evelyne focused on literature review, coordinating interviews with stakeholders and feedback collection. All members participated in preparation of the written report and presentations. Rajeev played the facilitating role on the written report by distributing tasks and compiling the results to help professionalize the flow of the completed document. Yuan helped the work of reviewing, modifying paper and arranging references. Karlskrona, June 15, 2011 Rajeev Akireddy Yuan Zhi Evelyne Lyatuu ii Acknowledgements We would like to thank our advisors Henrik Ny and Macro Valente for their valuable support and insights. Members of the Karlskrona Municipality, Johnny Lilja and Lisa Wälitalo for their insights, inputs and collaboration and family members Rikard Fristedt, Chongyuan Zhi, Deepthi and Aavrit Akireddy for their critical review of this paper and support. We woud also like to thank Henrik Johansson from Växjö Kommun, Monika Oredsson from Ronneby Kommun, Eva Johansson from Olofström Kommun, Liv Balkmar from Linköping Kommun and Thomas Svanberg from Karlshamn Kommun who were instrumental in validating the inputs and providing us with necessary feedback and suggesting us with the improvements that can be made. Personnel from local companies and businesses at Karlskrona like Johnny Gylling (Telenor), Häkan Breda (Roxtec), Sven Hult & Beenny Gustavsson (BlekingeTrafiken), Anders Karmehed (Affarsverken) etc. who have helped us with inputs. Karlskrona, June 15, 2011 Rajeev Akireddy Yuan Zhi Evelyne Lyatuu iii Executive Summary Introduction Access to energy is central to sustainable development. In the present world, finite sources of energy are used to produce electricity and are also used for transportation purposes. In the process emit greenhouse gases, causing air and water pollution, producing waste and raising risks like storage of radioactive waste, global warming, rise in sea levels, widespread flooding, droughts and the spread of tropical diseases which are already having a devastating impact. These effects are leading to increase in the costs for resources, higher taxes and tougher legislation. The predicted outlook until 2035 depends primarily on various government policies and actions that are taken now in terms of reduction in energy consumption, consumer behavior, promotion of renewable energy options and promotion of public transportation making policy as a means to achieve sustainability. Local authorities like municipalities play an important role in the achievements of the EU’s energy and climate change goals as climate impacts are manifested locally and local governments as “neighborhood authorities” for people, companies and organizations are better positioned to address them. Since challenges presented in municipalities are complex, a generic five level strategic planning framework can be used to simplify, categorize and build a mental model. When this framework is applied for Strategic Sustainable Development it is referred as the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD). Planning and transitioning towards a sustainable society requires significant efforts and success can be defined in terms of basic principles which are necessary, sufficient, concrete and scientifically agreed upon, they are: In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing …: 1. …concentrations of substances extracted from the Earth‘s crust; 2. …concentrations of substances produced by society; 3. …degradation by physical means; and, in that society… 4. …people are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs. iv FSSD based planning for energy and climate change programs in municipalities: 1. The Systems level identifies the systems being studied for planning. In this case it is the local government and its policies and actions that are a primary contributor to the way the energy demands will be addressed in the future. It is very important for municipalities to foresee the implications of its actions and hence take an integrated (socio-ecological and economic) view towards energy and climate change program involving all its stakeholders. 2. The Success level identifies the overall goals that need to be achieved in order for the planning process to be successful within the constraints of the four sustainability principles. 3. At the Strategic level, backcasting from the vision of success is applied to enable municipality’s decision-makers in a step-by step approach to reach success, and then the strategic guidelines are used to choose concrete actions. 4. High level actions are identified for stakeholders who are the primary implementers. 5. Tools are used to monitor and report actions. The municipality is responsible for creating the local Policy 1 , the responsibility for implementation of policy measures lies with the local stakeholders2. There have been some gaps and challenges in the current implementation and this thesis explored some of them in a few municipalities within Southeast Sweden and proposed strategies that could possibly fulfil them. Research Questions 1. What are the current planning and implementation procedures at Karlskrona municipality that aids in realizing its energy and climate change program goals? 2. From a Strategic Sustainable Development perspective, what are some gaps and challenges in Karlskrona municipality’s current planning and implementation procedures that are preventing them from reaching their energy and climate change program goals? 3. What are some possible strategies to address the above gaps and challenges in current procedures? 1 Policy is a high-level plan with general goals and acceptable procedures especially of a governmental body 2 Stakeholder is defined as one who is involved in or affected by a course of action v Methods Literature review, interviews and content analysis are the research methods used in this thesis. The research was divided in six stages, which consisted of Initiation, Identification, Analysis, Concept Development, Validate and Recommendation. • In the Initiation stage, information was gathered from the journals, articles of the EU Commission Energy department, Swedish municipalities, EU Policies, Guidebooks, Case studies and from other theses works. • In the Identification stage, interviewed the energy and climate change coordinator at Karlskrona municipality on their current energy and climate change planning and implementation process and created a process map. A few Target and Other Group companies were also interviewed for identification of gaps and challenges. • In the Analysis stage, the current reality was summarized, and analyzed for common threads in the interview responses and to draw up a list of requirements to close the gaps and challenges. • In the Concept Development stage, the authors explored literature to identify a few strategies which could be used to fulfill the above requirements. • In the Validation stage, the authors