As climate change and population growth threaten rural communities, especially in regions like Sub-Saharan Africa, rural electrification becomes crucial to addressing water and food security within the energy-water-food nexus. This study explores social innovation in microgrid projects, focusing on integrating micro-agrovoltaics (APV) with flywheel energy storage systems (FSSs) and small-scale water desalination and purification plants. Employing a mixed-methods approach to assess the economic viability of FSS and APV-powered desalination, we believe that social innovation could serve as a significant tool for rural development, requiring collaboration between governments, the private sector, and nonprofit organizations. While FSS technology for microgrids has not been entirely developed, it holds promise as an alternative energy storage solution. Our capital budgeting analysis, presented within the context of social innovation, reveals positive Net Present Values (NPV) and a short payback period over the project’s 20-year lifespan.

Renewable energy (RE) systems are becoming a central component of the clean energy transition and are often seen as the way to combat climate change. Their establishment requires innovation, investments, and deployment policies for emerging technologies. Governments around the world are increasingly trying to create and support the energy-tech and climate-tech innovation ecosystems in their attempt to promote an innovation-supporting environment. However, energy innovation policies are often aligned with the dichotomous notion of technology-push and market-pull and overlook the social, political, and cultural contexts in which RE innovative technologies are embedded, and the multiple actors and interactions that are associated with their development. By combining the Middle-Out Perspective (MOP) and innovation literature, this paper argues that an innovation ecosystem could be weaved from the middle-out. This paper analyzes the case of ‘Eilat-Eilot Renewable Energy Initiative’ and Israel’s RE innovation ecosystem creation through the lens of the MOP and applies a socio-technical interpretation to the push and pull terminology. Process tracing methodology was applied to trace a sequence of events to determine whether an actor was pushed or pulled, the formation of a network of actors, and its evolvement to an energy innovation ecosystem from the middle-out. Data for the analysis were collected from interviews, policy papers, media articles, and Governmental decisions. The analysis demonstrates how middle actors push the implementation of RE technologies in Israel, and at the same time pull decision-makers and other middle actors to promote the low carbon transition. The push and pull forces and the interactions between actors lead to the engagement of new stakeholders in the innovation network, the adoption of more ambitious RE targets and supporting policies, and the creation of an effective RE innovation ecosystem. This paper uses the MOP as an analytical framework and the push and pull terminology to demonstrate how a middle actor initiates and develops an actor-network by interacting with other actors. As this network broadens, it forms an effective innovation ecosystem. A network of actors has the potential to lead change, provide innovative ideas, initiate research, encourage investments, create employment possibilities, and promote regional sustainable development.

The need for a deep and rapid reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is well recognized. Around 70% of all anthropogenic GHG emissions are generated by energy systems, including electricity production, industry, and transport. Even countries with ambitious emission reduction policies, strong schemes to incentivize renewable energy (RE), and clear timetables for phasing out coal-fired power plants are acting too slowly to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°. The transition to a low-carbon society is a socio-technical change by nature, being interdependent on social, political, cultural, and technological processes. However, policies seem to overlook its non-linear and dynamic characters, the variety of actors involved (governing institutions, organizations, cities, firms, academic institutions, communities, and end-users), and the various situations, actions, and options for changes to occur. The transition is commonly perceived as either initiated and promoted from the ‘top-down’, by policymakers, or from the ‘bottom-up’, by consumers and grassroots. The Middle Out Perspective (MOP) provides a unique lens to examine the transition by focusing on actors located 'in-between' the top and bottom and their contributions to a durable systematic change. Professionals, communities, non-governmental organizations (NGO's), commercial firms, and local governments are potentially influential middle actors, and can use their resources and assets to diffuse their agendas, knowledge, and experience in three directions in a middle-out manner: upwards (to influence policymakers), downwards (to influence citizens and end-users) and sideways across their networks (to influence other organizations, companies, and actors located in between the levels).

The middle-out perspective (MOP) is a relatively new analytical perspective that provides a unique lens to examine the impact of middle actors on action, inaction, change, and stagnation. This research explores the middle-out mechanism and is the first to intersect the various components of the MOP: directions of influence (upwards, downward, and sideways), modes of influence (aggregating, mediating, and enabling), and actors' levels of agency (interest and willingness to act) and capacity (ability to act). The study focuses on one middle actor: Meshek Renewables (MR), an entrepreneurial company in the Israeli energy arena. Through a detailed intersectional analysis, the roles that MR fills in overcoming barriers to transition in two domains are examined: (1) decarbonizing the transport system, and (2) increasing the share of PV in the electricity generation mix. The analysis demonstrates how, by using its assets and resources, MR raised other top, bottom, and middle actors' interest in implementing new energy technologies and improved their abilities to integrate low-carbon energy solutions and promote electric vehicles. Understanding the middle-out mechanism contributes to recognizing the qualities and assets middle-actors need to effectively overcome barriers to action associated with other actors' agency and capacity.

In a first of its kind, controlled field study, a middle-out strategy (MOS) was developed and applied in an aim to shave mid-week summer peak demand. The MOS focuses on middle actors as agents that can induce change from the middle-out, exerting influence via their networks in three directions: downstream (on end-users), upstream (on suppliers and regulators) and sideways (on other communities).

The study was conducted in the summer of 2018 in two Israeli local communities (n = 66, n =258 households) and focused on the downstream impact. In both communities: (a) demand was monitored via smart meters, (b) generic and tailored text messages were sent twice a week during peak hours, and (c) economic incentive was offered to households that either saved 10% of their electricity during peak hours compared to the previous year, or 10% in August 2018 compared to July 2018. In one community, an additional four engagement activities took place. All interventions were mediated through local middle actors and middle platforms and differed in the level of the middle actors’ involvement. Additional data was collected via survey and interviews.

A downstream impact was demonstrated when about one-third of the participating households reduced their peak consumption by 10%, with an average reduction of 4.5–6%. A sideways impact was indicated when middle actors from similar communities expressed an interest in conducting such a project in the future. An upstream impact was indicated when a significant actor in the electricity sector expressed an interest in supporting similar future projects.