Renewable energy is one of the cornerstones in the fight against global warming. Both in Japan and Germany, new providers are offering products such as »green electricity« or »green gas« from renewable sources to consumers and businesses, challenging the established utilities. These new
providers are startups, spin-offs from NGOs, citizen energy cooperatives or other community energy initiatives.
While established players (like municipal utilities or large power suppliers) can rely on well-elaborated revenue streams and marketing concepts, these remain unclear for the new players: How do they position themselves in the market? Which identities do they present in their online
presence: local citizens’ initiative, professional energy provider, green movement or other identities? This selfpositioning is an important part of the strategies that the new providers harness to create their place in the market and it will influence their success.
During the summer school, we will analyse the websites of these organizations in Japan and Germany using qualitative content analysis as our empirical method. In our analysis, we will take a comparative perspective. We will also look at how the self-positioning is embedded
in the markets, political and societal frameworks in the two countries.