Community Wealth Building as a catalyst for just transitions? The role of anchor institutions in supporting co-operative and community-led decarbonisation in the UK and Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Community Wealth Building (CWB) is a growing international policy movement for local economic development that seeks to advance democratic economies using the support of place-based ‘anchor institutions’. Alongside the international rise of net zero law, there has also been increasing global interest in enhancing community ownership and engagement in local energy transitions. Connections between CWB and net zero are seldom explored, yet clear synergies and convergences emerge in the pursuit of democratising local green economies. In our paper, we examine two empirical case studies of western democratic nations with similar legal structures, comparing anchor institution support for co-operative and community-led decarbonisation in Canada (Saskatoon) and the UK (Oldham), drawing on in-depth interviews and document analysis to understand how such activity may catalyse just transitions. Drawing on a novel bottom-up and locally oriented just transitions framework, our findings show that anchor institutions and their networks act as key intermediaries for local energy initiatives across local and regional scales. However, we see that CWB alone cannot facilitate a just transition that also democratises the economy. We conclude by emphasising the need for mutual learning between CWB and just transitions, with CWB becoming more participatory and just transitions more engaged with political economy. Finally, we offer four policy recommendations to guide future research and practice: (1) Establish legal frameworks for CWB; (2) Combine future just transition and CWB policy agendas; (3) Ensure that regional and local authorities work together to deliver CWB and net zero goals simultaneously; and (4) Acknowledge anchor institutions as key just transition intermediaries.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.016 | 0.019 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".