Abstract There has been growing interest in collaborative approaches such as co‐creation and co‐design for strategic energy planning and energy policy design. However, existing analyses have conceptualized collaboration in rather vague terms, have focused primarily on the involvement of industrial actors and have been set in Western Europe. In this paper, we assess an inclusive energy transition policy co‐design experiment in Ida‐Virumaa, a region in Estonia historically dominated by the oil shale industry and with scarce experience of cross‐sector collaboration to date. The experiment had a twofold purpose: (1) to establish a network of people interested in renewable energy and energy efficiency in the region, (2) to develop and validate proposals for policies that could accelerate the energy transition. We found that expectation alignment, social learning, resource mobilization and developmental evaluation can be used to create synergy among participants and can lead to innovative policy proposals. However, collaboration increases the time needed for policy development, the existence of alternative venues can undermine the collaborative process, fluid roles can create confusion around implementation and there might not be many resources to build on in old industrial regions. We conclude that it is still relatively easy to co‐design energy policy or a strategic energy plan even in a setting that does not enjoy a well‐developed collaborative culture but it is much more challenging to co‐create a strong network of committed actors with clear roles in the implementation of policies and plans.
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