Climate change is forcing local communities to make decisions about local resilience, such as through local energy management. But not all communities are equipped to navigate the ever-changing landscape of the energy transition. To meaningfully engage leaders of the local energy transition, our interdisciplinary team organized two full-day workshops with 53 diverse stakeholders from the state of Wisconsin in the United States. Our mixed-method approach combines participant survey data and textual analyses of notes from group activities and discussions. We map the mental models of local energy leaders by examining how factors such as individual experiences, knowledge, and activating stimuli influence risk perceptions. While participants support clean energy technologies broadly, they expressed concerns over resource availability and design and implementation of equity-centered projects. These workshops strengthened this community of energy leaders and informed actionable next steps, underscoring the effectiveness of this approach for future stakeholder engagement and collaboration.
