Starting up a local energy system in Sweden: The story of technological collaboration between an Italian supplier and established Swedish energy company

Paper in proceeding, 2019

This paper focuses on the inter-organizational aspects of creating a local energy system in Sweden. Today the Swedish energy system faces a challenge of becoming 100 % renewable in 2040. To be able to manage the transformation the system needs to open up for new actors and new renewable technology. However, to embed new renewable technology into the existing system is difficult because of the already predefined infrastructure and regulations. Hence, there is need to explore how technological collaboration can facilitate the process of embedding new renewable technology into the energy system. Therefore, this study focuses on the technological collaboration between the energy company E.ON and the Italian supplier Loccioni and the embedding of new technology in the shape of a local energy system in Sweden. By relying on the Industrial Network Approach and in particular the resource layer this study aims to explore the impact of the collaboration on three levels; the dyadic level, the project level and the system level.