Elia is a Belgian transmission system operator for high-voltage electricity. The organisation wanted to develop a vision on the future of energy in our country, together with various other industry partners. Think BBDO deliberately chose an approach based on the close involvement of the organisation’s stakeholders.
Think BBDO developed a methodology and a concept to convey Elia’s new vision: ‘Elia: Energy Pact, Beyond 2020’. Elia played the leading and facilitating role in the development of a vision for the future, together with various decision-makers and stakeholders: traditional and renewable energy producers, distributors, B2B customers, governments, environmental organisations, experts and members of academia.
Think BBDO organised three roundtable discussions, discussing one key theme in the debate during each of these panel meetings. All the stakeholders were given an opportunity to share their ideas. We used these insights to draft an ‘Outlook 2020 document’, calling for an energy pact for Belgium.
The following year, Think BBDO organised a new workshop, during which we once again collected the input of all the stakeholders. Think BBDO used an online deliberation platform to have all the stakeholders discuss and amend the executive summary. All this culminated in a document titled ‘Building Blocks for an Energy Pact for Belgium', which was presented to the political parties in the spring of 2014. At the same time, the stakeholders jointly called on all the governments in our country to take advantage of this initiative to develop an energy pact for Belgium as soon as possible. Think BBDO also organised a press conference.
The 200 guests, the 60 participating stakeholder organisations and the more than 30 signatories appreciated the initiatives ‘Call for an Energy Pact’ and ‘Building Blocks for an Energy Pact’. Moreover, the initiative also attracted a lot of attention from national media such as RTBF, Radio 1, VRT, De Tijd, etc.
The call for an energy pact was included in the federal and regional coalition agreements after the 2014 elections, as well as in the programmes of several political parties.
In recent years, the need to arrive at an integrated approach of our energy policy, as intended in the Energy Pact, became a major priority for governments, companies, stakeholders and citizens. There is no denying that Elia’s Energy Pact was the catalyst for this.