This book analyses the potential for active stakeholder engagement in the energy transition in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR) in order to foster clean energy deployment. Public acceptability and bottom-up activities can be critical for enduring outcomes to an energy transition. As a result, it is vital to understand how to unlock the potential for public, community and prosumer participation to facilitate renewable energy deployment and a clean energy transition – and, consequently, to examine the factors influencing social acceptability. Focussing on the diverse BSR, this book draws on expert contributions to consider a range of different topics, including the challenges of social acceptance and its policy implications; strategies to address challenges of acceptability among stakeholders; and community engagement in clean energy production. Overall, the authors examine the practical implications of current policy measures and provide recommendations on how lessons learnt from this ‘energy lab region’ may be applied to other regions. Reflecting an interdisciplinary approach in the social sciences, this book is an essential resource for scholars, students and policymakers researching and working in the areas of renewable energy, energy policy and citizen engagement, and interested in understanding the potential for bottom-up, grassroots activities and social acceptability to expedite the energy transition and reanimate democracies. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

The Energy Trilemma in the Baltic Sea Region provides insight into the energy trilemma in the Baltic Sea Region. Energy Trilemma in the Baltic Sea Region has undergone significant transformation in the last number of years. Energy actors in the region are struggling to reconcile new questions of energy security following the COVID-19 pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine with net-zero objectives and a cost-of-living crisis. Balancing these concerns is essential to resolving the “energy trilemma”: the dilemma that emerges for policy-makers and regulators seeking to balance energy security, equity, and environmental concerns in pursuit of a wholly sustainable energy system. This volume draws together a range of perspectives from scholars of the Baltic Sea Region seeking to understand the manifestations and impact of these systemic regional changes. In considering previously underexamined studies on the energy trilemma and in providing new perspectives by framing the trilemma in times of crisis, this book provides new conceptual and empirical insight into a rapidly changing energy region at the heart of both European energy policy and the current energy crisis. This volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of energy politics, energy law and policy, energy transitions, and Baltic studies more broadly.

This title was first published in 2003. The Baltic Sea region offers exceptionally rich material for the discussion of civil society. This is because it has witnessed the erosion of communist regimes, the crisis of the welfare state, the increasing importance of new social movements and the shift from a centralist paradigm to one oriented towards networks. This engaging book focuses on the phenomena and prospects for civil society in north-eastern Europe which have had a major impact on political and scholarly debates since 1989. Nineteen experts from the region provide a comprehensive and comparative account of the history, the present state and the perspectives of civil society in the Baltic Sea area. The reader will learn that civil society should not only be seen in opposition to the state and that it has a major impact on current developments of European integration.

Since the end of the Cold War there has been an increased interest in the Baltics. The Baltic States brings together three titles, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, to provide a comprehensive and analytical guide integrating history, political science, economic development and contemporary events into one account. Since gaining their independence, each country has developed at its own pace with its own agenda and facing its own obstacles. The authors examine the tensions accompanying a post-communist return to Europe after the long years of separation and how each country has responded to the demands of becoming a modern European state. Estonia was the first of the former Soviet republics to enter membership negotiations with the European Union in 1988 and is a potential candidate for the next round of EU expansion in 2004. Lithuania and Latvia have also expressed their desire for future membership of NATO and the EU.

In this book, scholars from different disciplines use case studies drawn from Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark to analyze the last century's construction of, engagement with, and challenges to both "hard" and "soft" Scandinavian boundaries. The book provide historical examples of how national borders have been contested by Scandinavian states caught between powerful Continental neighbors; these attempts to firm up boundaries can be contrasted to the denationalization of borders caused both by the globalization of communications and markets and by political efforts to submerge national boundaries in a common Baltic identity. A second set of studies focuses on boundaries defining Scandinavian minorities. Here, the book analyzes the spaces, rituals, bodies, gender roles, and collective-identity discourses implicit in majority-minority boundaries - and their transgression. Throughout, Scandinavian bordering processes are studied in terms of the groups that launch them, the methods by which they are propagated, and, finally, the meanings supposedly, and actually, invested in them. (Series: Nordische Geschichte - Vol. 10)

Reconciling the diversity of political cultures, values and national identities with the European integration project is one of the most fundamental challenges contemporary Europe is facing. This challenge is readily apparent in the Baltic Sea region with its mosaic of peoples, cultures and identities. The impact of the ongoing process of European integration on the post-Communist societies on the Eastern rim of the Baltic Sea is indisputable. The negotiations between the European Union and the East European candidate countries were in fact accompanied by a large scale transfer of organization.