Experimenting for Change: Potential of Employees of Municipal Energy Companies as Local Change Agents in Urban Sustainability Transformations

Exceeding planetary boundaries poses a threat to humanity and demands sustainability transformation, particularly within urban contexts. Municipal energy suppliers are important stakeholders in this and have great potential to contribute to the decarbonization of cities. In order to foster their transformative potential of the employees and therefore also as local change agents, we conducted a series of workshops within a municipal energy company (MEC) in a German city with about 35,000 inhabitants. The workshops, based on the climate action education format #climatechallenge, created spaces for reflection and action: Through two transformation experiments, the employees have not only addressed climate protection in the private sphere but also developed and collectively promoted climate protection measures in their workplace, with impacts that extend into the city. The data presented in this article highlight the potential of such transformative workshop formats and position MEC’s employees as local change agents in urban sustainability transformations