Making Energy Poverty a national political issue - local and regional agenda setting as interest group strategy for national agenda setting?

According to Janning (2009: 148) interest groups which are financed mainly by public funding, like the German costumer associations (Verbraucherzentralen), are particularly successful to influence policies if their issues are already on the governmental agenda. This makes those interest groups extremely dependent on political cycles, what means by implication that they lose influence if the issue is not already an interest of the governmental parties. The paper asked for strategies of interest groups to influence the national agenda when an issue is not already relevant on national level with a focus on the relevance of local and regional initiatives. Is a local and regional agenda setting, the development of position papers or the implementation of possible solutions und instruments on the local or regional level a strategy to influence the agenda on the national level, when an issues is not yet present there? Are those papers used as a fundament for discussion or to deliver best-practice examples to establish new knowledge, gain attention and generate pressure? Or are those projects and initiatives just attempts to solve local and regional problems with the capacities that are available on these levels without a strategic aspect for national agenda setting? The paper analyses these questions regarding the issue of energy poverty. This issue gains almost no attention on the national level in Germany yet, but is addressed in many local and regional initiatives. Here the paper analyse the dispute about the issue in the “Masterplan Dortmund” and the project “NRW bekämpft Energiearbeit” (North Rhine-Westphalia against energy poverty) with a special focus on the Costumer Association NRW (Verbraucherzentrale NRW) and its interest group strategy.