Stakeholders' attitudes towards green energy innovations as a prerequisite to successful implementation: international experience and lessons learned in the Ukrainian Carpathians

Energy cooperatives, “zero non-renewables” towns and other community initiatives in renewable energy (RE) are emerging across the world, in particular, in Europe and the North America. Such social initiatives vary in size, success rates and implementation strategies. Decentralization consistently appears to be one of the most important characteristics of institutional development and generally, increases the institutional space for local (community) players (Oteman, 2014). Analysis of international cases shows that a range of systemic problems hamper the rapid development and diffusion of RE. Therefore, additional attention is needed from policy makers and other stakeholders that have an interest in speeding up the diffusion process. A study by Negro et al (2012) shows that a lack of stable institutions, and poor alignment of these institutions with practices in other sectors and across governance scales are key systemic problems.