Using Ostrom’s IAD in regional energy transition research & Institutional legal theory studies

The two-year RETSI project is funded in the NWO MARET program on the societal aspects of the energy transition in regions. The project consists of three postdoc projects embedded in three different faculties of the University of Twente. RETSI assumes added value of integrating the energy transition with other societal challenges in urban and rural contexts and their interface.
Our aim is to design new action perspectives for private and public actors for exploiting synergies of energy transition integration in different contexts. Theoretically the project draws on the institutional heritage of Elinor Ostrom cs, in particular IAD and NAAS. Drawing on these theoretical lines, RETSI aims to develop an institutional perspective on integrating regional energy transition and other societal challenges like climate adaptation and sustainable agriculture. Two postdocs will present the RETSI project and will elaborate in more detail on the institutionally oriented analytical framework currently under development in the project.

Abstract for presentation by prof. mr. dr. Michiel Heldeweg:

‘ILTIAD’ as Empirico-legal and Socio-legal modelling for CPR analysis & design towards a Just Energy Transition:

The ILTIAD model was developed in an attempt to merge Ostrom’s IAD-framework with insights from Institutional Legal Theory (ILT). This was done with the aim of providing a heuristic tool, supporting analyses and design of smart energy grids and normative formats for (such grids as embedded in) energy community governance. The presentation will provide an explanation about why ILTIAD was first conceived to address the disconnect between desired rules-in-use and existing (and needlessly constraining?) rules-in-form, and was next developed further to support the normative-institutional legal governance approach of just energy transition experimentation and of socio-legal formats for energy community development; towards enhancing polycentric energy democratization.