The European DIGITISE project establishes “energy dialogues” that bring together citizens, businesses, associations, and decision-makers to ensure a structured exchange in which every voice is respected. Benoît Verhulst, Project manager, explains how Missions Publiques supports these dialogues*.
D: How does Missions Publiques’ expertise in stakeholder engagement and deliberative processes contribute to the objectives of the DIGITISE project?
Benoît Verhulst. Our aim is to help decision-makers create better policies. To achieve this, we use collective intelligence and collaboration. The idea is to give a voice to those who may benefit from or be impacted by a policy because they have expertise and an opinion on it as consumers, citizens and users. Digitise’s objective is to create technical/digital support to help consumers better understand and manage the energy system. Before doing this, however, we want to hear from those consumers because they are best placed to indicate what they want and how they would use such support. We go beyond a one-sided poll: here, we try to involve the participants in creating this new technical/digital support because, ultimately, we want it to be useful to them.
D: What role do you play in designing and facilitating community interaction within energy pilots, and how do you ensure inclusive participation?
Benoît Verhulst. As mentioned above, we want to go beyond the poll and facilitate in-depth discussions and deliberative processes with the participants. Our role is to ensure that these discussions are of a high quality. Quality is expressed in three ways:
- The logistical aspects of events (venue, catering and communication).
- The methodology of the discussions: discussions must be moderated and facilitated using various discussion and expression methods.
- The content must be linked to the experiences of the participants and must be concrete. To achieve this, we rely on our partners who work with the community on the ground.
Participants to our events (the so called “energy dialogues”) need to understand where we are going, why we are going in that direction, and that we want to do more than make criticisms and observations; we want to find arguments and, eventually, solutions.
With regard to the three aforementioned aspects, particular attention must be paid to inclusivity. On this, we can count on our partners on the ground who already know the participants/targeted community. Nevertheless, the Digitise process is long-term, so we need to ensure that participants at our events stay involved. To achieve this, we will need to diversify the means of interaction and demonstrate the progress of the Digitise project, showing participants how they can contribute.
"These dialogues also help us better understand how citizens perceive the energy system.
Project manager, Missions Publiques
D: How do the Energy Dialogues activities organised by Missions Publiques influence the development and adaptation of the digital tools in the project?
Benoît Verhulst. We envisage the Energy Dialogues as a citizen counterpart to the technical discussions that will take place within the Digitise project. The aim is to establish a permanent dialogue between citizens and our team, so that we can learn from each other. Currently, there are plenty of digital tools with various functions and possibilities, but efficiency and user experience are always the deciding factors. Through this dialogue, we hope to refine the tool throughout the process, ensuring it meets the needs of the participants. Beyond the creation of this tool, the Energy dialogues will also give us a lot of information on how people understand and look at the energy system.
D: In what ways are you working with local authorities and citizens to build trust and long-term commitment to energy communities?
Benoît Verhulst. If we want a community to improve its energy literacy, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. We need to work with all the stakeholders involved, especially the citizens. Currently, energy is seen as an individual matter: everyone has their own energy provider, and we only consider the energy that arrives at our house. What we want to emphasize is that energy is a system and a commonality, and that we may need to change the way we view energy in our lives. This will require long-term vision -because the change won’t happen in a few years-and the smooth transfer of knowledge about how energy arrives at our houses. While energy may seem abstract to people, they are interested in the discussion when they see their energy bills rising.
D: What broader impact do you hope your contribution to DIGITISE will have on civic involvement in energy transitions across Europe?
Benoît Verhulst. The question of energy, especially access to it, is linked to many socio-economic issues worth exploring that could improve community life. Therefore, we want to link energy policy with other policies affecting citizens. This project also raised the issue of digital literacy: how can digital tools really help people to expand their knowledge and change their habits? This is a significant issue for us because in each project we work on, people want to see more digital tools, applications and software, but often these already exist, and people are either unaware of them or reluctant to use them. Our challenge in this process will therefore be twofold: first, what will make people look for information on an online tool, and secondly, how can we transform that into a change of habits?
To learn more about : https://digitise-horizon.eu/ and https://missionspubliques.org/pf/digitise/?lang=en
