Harmony in Policy? Stakeholder perceptions in German local heat planning

The fate of the energy transition hinges not only on the existence of well-crafted policies, but also on their successful implementation, oftentimes by conglomerates of local actors. Usually involving both public and private parties without clear hierarchies, local implementation of policy is a process of multi-stakeholder governance and often characterized by difficult collective decision-making due to different perceptions of challenges and priorities. A good example of this process is energy and heat planning, which involves several local stakeholders with different hierarchical structures. In this paper, we study the evaluation of challenges and success factors among municipalities and utilities in the context of heat planning in Germany. Based on a survey of 267 communal stakeholders, we find an effect of inversion in juxtaposing importance and difficulty ratings: While municipalities perceive factors such as effective communication, clearly defined responsibilities and concrete measures and projects as more important than their utility counterparts, utilities see them as more challenging. Such perceptual inversion has the potential to complicate collective goal-setting and decision-making and thus can slow down energy transition governance processes.