The first day consisted of presentations from each of the IANOS island delegates, sharing their islands’ decarbonisation goals and their experiences in community engagement. Also, the Hanzehogeschool gave a talk on designing a stakeholder engagement strategy of the lighthouse island of Ameland. The day ended with an interactive workshop by New Energy Coalition on crowdfunding for renewable energy initiatives.

The second day saw the group dive deeper into the history of Samsø’s community-based energy transition. The training session demonstrated climate accounting tools, social-political aspects of island energy transitions, and how implementing off-the-shelf renewable energy technologies can create jobs and improve liveability on islands. The second half of the day comprised site visits all over the island – including the solar and battery-powered marina (part of the SMILE project), one of the island’s 4 district heating plants, an onshore wind park, and solar PV car parking combined with charging station for publicly owned electric vehicles.

On the third and last day Søren Hermansen, CEO of EnergiAkademiet, delivered an engaging and interactive workshop inspiring the IANOS island delegates in ways to organise stakeholder and citizen engagement meetings about community-based energy projects on islands.

In conclusion: a lot of ideas were exchanged, common challenges identified, best practices shared, and memories created. Now the partners are ready to implement wat they learned on their own island!

Want to read more in-depth information about the days, programme and workshops? We wrote an in-depth report about the training.