Energy Descent Action Plan

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Description

Rob Hopskins:

"In essence, an EDAP is a Plan B for the community, a drawing-together of the visioning and backcasting work done up to that point, telling the story of how the Transition could happen. Rather than Transition being a disparate assembly of projects, an EDAP pulls together a range of initiatives and puts them in the wider strategic context of intentionally planning for the relocalisation of the settlement as a whole. But what exactly is it? Is it a ‘plan’ in the accepted sense of a step-by-step plan with stated outcomes, is it a vision document, a story, painting a picture of how a powered-down future would be, or is it a rewriting of Council policies, showing how enlightened leadership would promote Transition? Fact is, nobody knows for sure, it’s too early to tell, but we do have some experience now to go on." (http://transitionnetwork.org/patterns/implementing-infrastructure/energy-descent-action-plans)


Examples

"The first one, the Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan, was a student project based on the question “what would it look like if?” Although much celebrated, it was based on very little community consultation and was largely a student initiative. Transition Sunshine Coast’s EDAP was produced largely like Kinsale’s, as a project co-ordinated by students on a ‘Time for an Oil Change’ course. The final plan though had a far wider political impact. It led to Transition being featured in the Council’s climate change and peak oil strategy and in their draft Energy Transition Plan, and to the Council’s stated vision being “to build a low carbon, low oil, resilient future for the Sunshine Coast”.


In 2009, Transition Forest Row produced ‘Forest Row in Transition: a community work in progress’ , a short ‘pr-EDAP’, which offered a brief and playful vision of a powered-down future Forest Row. Their budget didn’t enable them to do indepth research, and they didn’t feel they had enough members of the community onboard, so they decided to write something very accessible, a narrative, combining graphic design, humour and some information. Reflecting on its impact, Mike Grenville of TFR told me that it raised local credibility and awareness, but it would have been better with some market research before and after its publication in order to assess impact. It does continue to be something that is a source of inspiration, referred back to regularly.


The most substantial EDAP so far was ‘Transition in Action: an Energy Descent Action Plan’ produced by Transition Town Totnes in June 2010 . This emerged from many community visioning workshops and other activities, and offered a powerful vision of the Totnes of 2030. It began with an oral history of Totnes in the 1950s, and then explained the role of storytelling, before presenting a detailed timeline for the transitioning of food, energy, housing, education and much more. It also contained two detailed pieces of research, ‘Can Totnes and district feed itself?’ and an Energy Budget for the area." (http://transitionnetwork.org/patterns/implementing-infrastructure/energy-descent-action-plans)