TRANSrisk - Stakeholder Engagement & Method Training Workshop

Athens 9-10 March 2016

TRANSrisk is a project on developing low-emission pathways using both quantitative tools (models) and qualitative tools (based on stakeholder engagement). The goal of this workshop was to familiarise project partners with the set of qualitative tools that have been selected for analysis in the project. TRANSrisk is funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme.

JIN's Wytze van der Gaast co-facilitated a mock session to train TRANSrisk partners in applying the tool of H-form (see picture) This tool focusses a discussion on a question or statement. Discussion participants respond to this question / statement by indicating how strongly they disagree or agree, on a numerical scale from 0 to 10 with a justification in writing. Negative answers (disagree) are placed to the left of the question / statement while positive answers (agree) are placed to the right of it. The emerging H-form is then used to group views, discuss these to bridge diverging views and distill further research or policy actions.

At the TRANSrisk workshop, a hypothetical case study was taken with a statement about the desired scale of governmental action on energy efficiency improvements. Participants took the role of stakeholders, considered arguments why more energy efficiency action was needed, or why not, and identified what extra information would be needed to come closer to a common point of view. Examples of such information needs were:

• what is the impact on GDP growth?
• what is the payback time for individual consumers?
• what are the employment impacts?
• how will it impact import and export flows?

These specific questions were then addressed by one of the models in TRANSrisk's toolbox after which a discussion took place on the model simulation outcomes with stakeholders.