On 18th November 2021, DIALOGUES coordinator, Energieinstitut at the Johannes Kepler University Linz, represented the project at the SIET Conference on Social Innovation in the Energy Transition, in the session on the Perspectives on Energy Citizenship, organised by the H2020 project EnergyPROSPECTS.
This session aimed to bring together social science energy researchers interested in gaining an understanding of the various ways in which energy citizenship (ENCI) affects the clean-energy transition process across Europe. Approx. 40 attendees participated in the 90-minute workshop.
The session opened with a short five-minute introduction to five of the social science and humanities (SSH) large scale European projects that commenced in 2021 in the field of ENCI (DIALOGUES, EC2, ENCLUDE, EnergyPROSPECTS, and GRETA). These introductions were followed by two paper presentations to open a wider discussion around defining ENCI and developing an ENCI typology.
After the presentations about the projects, participants had a discussion on differences in definitions and approaches and plans for collaborations. These were the main conclusions and outcomes:
Definitions of ENCI in the different projects:
- In DIALOGUES, ENCI is the degree to which, and the ways in which the goals of a sustainable energy transition enter into the everyday practices of an individual. ENCI can be shown through individual and collective actions, or felt internally through reflection and concern (this definition will be refined in 2 upcoming reports).
- In EC2, ENCI is people’s rights to and responsibilities for a just and sustainable energy transition.
- ENCLUDE wants to develop a definition from the ground up through the Delphi approach. It has no working definition yet.
- ENCI is defined in EnergyPROSPECTS in the following way: ‘ENCI refers to forms of civic involvement that pertain to the development of a more sustainable and democratic energy system. Beyond its manifest forms, ENCI also comprises various latent forms: it is an ideal that can be lived up to and realised to varying degrees, according to different framework conditions and states of empowerment.’
- According to GRETA, ENCI means that citizens participate in the enegy system by taking actions toward climate neutrality. This can take many forms, from homeowners opting for renewable energy solutions or electric vehicles to participate in energy communities or advocating for change on a global scale. For GRETA, the emergence of ENCI is individual and social. Its emergence rests on the interdependences of collective and individual behaviours.
Aligning conceptualisations and understandings of ENCI between H2020 sister projects
- Energy Citizenship for a sustainable future DIALOGUES (specific focus on gender and vulnerable groups, action labs, geopolitical scope, international partner, exploring resistance to the energy transition).
- Energy Citizenship and energy communities for a clean energy transition EC2 (legal, economic, psychological aspects of ENCI, municipalities, research & academia, energy communities, networks)
- Energy Citizens for Inclusive Decarbonisation ENCLUDE (transdisciplinarity, typology on different scales, decarbonisation potential, guidelines for local and regional policymakers, network of decarbonisation ambassadors, online training modules)
- Green energy transitions actions GRETA (energy poverty, the role of digital technologies to support ENCI actions, what enables ENCI individual actions and what turns them into collective behavioural patterns supporting the clean energy transition.
Synergies & separations identified between the five projects:
- The project objectives are similar, but the approaches are very different. Will this lead to different recommendations? Interesting to see.
- Hoping for cross-fertilization of results, since they will be drawn from different contexts all over Europe.
- ENCI is not inclusive by definition, it is important that different projects look at this from different angles and in different contexts.
- Due to diverse fields, types of actors involved, and diverging sets of nationalities of the consortiums, the project’s results should complement each other.