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This chapter shares the experience of National Grid to orchestrate two Appreciative Inquiry Summits in Massachusetts. One was framed around sustainability for the City of Worcester, Massachusetts, and the other was an industry-wide effort on energy efficiency in Massachusetts. The chapter demonstrates the potential for generative impact and transformation in complex and highly contentious environments. It also presents possible implications for the highly regulated energy utility industry and for the energy utilities that choose to lead the way.

This chapter captures and summarises the public sector auditing practices of Swiss subnational and local governments. Following the federal structure of Switzerland and the constitutional principle of decentralisation, lower government levels independently self-elaborate their audit institutions and structures, which is why a large variety of public sector audit arrangements exists. Local government audit mainly varies between the subnational states/cantons regarding the allocation of the external audit function and the qualitative requirements underlying the constitution of the auditing bodies. Depending on the cantonal legislative framework, local government audit is performed by a body of direct-democratically elected lay-auditors, a professional audit firm, an own independent auditing office or in a shared arrangement involving multiple of these actors.

This chapter presents a South American perspective on the environmental and financial sustainability of energy integration incorporating recent financial lessons from the United States and Europe. An illustrative project called UNASUR-GRID is presented to highlight new thinking on funding ecologically sensitive development (post-carbon electricity generation) and regional energy sovereignty via a new regional development bank for the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) called Bank of the South, Banco del Sur (BDS) ^1,2 . Sustainable BDS finance rules are presented that aim to break the link between development funding, environmental damage, and sovereign debt owed to banks outside the region, tapping into alternative finances to buffer the region against changes in global financial flows from core nations in the Great Recession.

The author attended presidential meetings of MERCOSUR and UNASUR supplementing this with presidential declarations comparing these with ongoing development planning from IIRSA, also interviewing a COSIPLAN representative. He also cooperated (as an independent researcher) with the Ecuadorian Central Bank research group called ‘New Architectures for Regional Finance’ (NAFR) and conducted technical interviews at South American energy institutes specialising in integration.

Development finance must reflect changes in both energy supply and demand while replacing fossil fuel inputs in electricity generation. Demand planning is necessary to attain sovereignty over a post-carbon electricity supply while maintaining dependability.

Successful energy cooperation is more than just energy infrastructure (UNASUR-GRID), cross-border confidence building is also required, reinforced by commercial treaties for energy exports and imports. Public and private national and regional energy companies need real incentives to trade internationally (improving competition) or renationalisation of supply and distribution may be necessary.

Highly original, this chapter incorporates government, UN and civil NGO inputs into primary research. BDS policy sources include government, ministerial and presidential speeches with interviews and participation in meetings with social movements. For indigenous ecological and social economic concepts such as Sumak Kawsay, the author has travelled extensively in South America and was an active participant at the first World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the 2010 Rights of Mother Earth (World Conference on Indigenous Peoples, 2014) in Cochabamba, Bolivia, along with ecologists and tribal representatives.

The emergence of strengths-based management may be the management innovation of our time. Nearly every organization has been introduced to its precepts – for example, the insight that a person or organization will excel only by amplifying strengths, never by simply fixing weaknesses. But in spite of impressive returns, organizations and managers have almost all stopped short of the breakthroughs that are possible. With micro tools largely in place, the future of strengths management is moving increasingly to the macro-management level, as witnessed in the rapid and far-reaching use of large group methods such as the Appreciative Inquiry Summit and its next generation design-thinking summit. Macro means whole and, by definition, unites many improbable opposites – for example, it embraces top down and bottom up simultaneously. It is a prime time source of organizational generativity. But the rules of macro-management are different than any other kind, most certainly micro-management. A decade of research and successful prototyping with single organizations, regions and cities, extended enterprises, industries, and UN-level world summits reveals five “X” factors – a specific set of mutually reinforcing elements of success and organizational generativity – and provides a clear set of guidelines for when and how you can deploy the “whole system in the room” design summit to bring out the best in system collaboration. By analyzing the performance and impacts of six case studies of the “whole system in the room” Appreciative Inquiry design summit, this chapter provides a bird’s eye view of the opportunities, challenges, and exciting new vistas opening up in this the collaborative age – a time when systemic action and macro-management skill are the primary leverage points for game-changing innovation, scalable solutions, and generative organizing. The chapter concludes with a call for more research into the stages of large group dynamics and advances a metaphor from the leadership literature – the spark, the flame, and the torch – to give imagery to the “positive contagion” and “the concentration effect of strengths” that happens during an Appreciative Inquiry Summit where 100s and sometimes 1000s come together interactively and collaboratively to design the future.

On its way to develop a smart grid in Indonesia, one key enabler in the early stage of implementation is advanced metering infrastructure (AMI). Thus, Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN), an electrical energy utility company owned by the government of the Republic of Indonesia as the only electricity utility company servicing customers from upstream to downstream in Indonesia, has started AMI program at some main cities. With AMI, real-time energy consumption profile, energy meter status and condition, and customer power quality can be acquired. Subsequently, these data collected by AMI can be used for further smart grid implementation by such IT systems and big data analysis. Instead of its function for smart grid backbone, AMI also significantly support smart energy on the city as a part of smart city initiatives. Nevertheless, its implementation requires more investment than the conventional metering system. This investment needs to be evaluated to define whether AMI is feasible and viable or not. This chapter is intended to observe the feasibility of AMI implementation in Indonesia using cost-benefit analysis (CBA). Two schemes were used as study objects, one scheme in which the communication infrastructure was managed by PLN itself, and the other one in which the communication infrastructure was managed by a third party. From the analysis, it appears that both schemes are proven to be feasible.

Access to affordable and sustainable energy is crucial for the improvement of the well-being of modern societies. Most energy technologies require comparatively high up-front investment, which adds to the challenge of electrification, despite the recognized multiple benefits. Partnership with multinational enterprises (MNEs) can provide necessary investment in infrastructure, finance, and technology for renewable energy and contribute to improving development indicators. However, remote areas with poor infrastructure do not have access to MNEs that are profit seekers. The Brazil experience with MNEs and “Light for All” (LfA) program shows that people gaining access to electricity invest more in businesses, education, health, and women reduce their drudgery at household chores. However, areas having a poor infrastructure in the north remain out of electricity, and attempts to create universal access were failed until a regulatory incentive framework and particular attention from the government was established. This is a great learning for the developing countries aiming to achieve sustainable development goals. A host country can gain development cooperation from MNEs with rightly formulated and implemented policies and regulatory conditions.

Over the past three decades, new off-grid electrification infrastructures – as micro-grids and other solar solutions – have moved from innovative initiatives, conducted by NGOs and private stakeholders, to a credible model promoted by international organizations for electrification of rural areas in developing countries. Multiple conditions support their spread: major technological advances in the field of renewable energies (panels, batteries), intensive Chinese industrial production allowing lower prices, institutional reforms in Africa including these solutions in major national electrification programmes, and, finally, an opening to the private sector as a supposed guarantee of the projects’ viability. However, while the development of this market calls for significant investments, a vast set of calculations and a strong “micro-capitalist” doctrine, all involved in their design, experts admit that a large proportion of projects hardly survive or even fail.

This chapter investigates these failures by exploring the ecology of such infrastructures, designed for “the poor.” It discusses “thinking infrastructures” in terms of longevity by focusing on economic failures risks. The authors argue that the ecology of the infrastructure integrates various economic conversions and exchanges chains expected to participate in the infrastructure’s functioning. By following energy access solutions for rural Africa in sub-regions of Senegal and Madagascar, from their political and technical design to their ordinary life, the authors examine the tensions and contradictions embedded within the scripts of balance supposed to guarantee their success.