Niall Dunphy

University College Cork | UCC · School of Engineering

Purpose In this paper, the functioning of value creating configurations and stakeholder interactions in networks of organisations of the retrofit industry for commercial buildings are investigated. Design/methodology/approach A value approach was applied to develop a model of retrofit activities. A Europe wide stakeholder engagement, consisting...

A report for the National Economic and Social Council (NESC), prepared by the Cleaner Production Promotion Unit, UCC offering an up-to-date review of the Environmental Policy Integration literature in both academic and policy debates. The report provides an overview of the theory and conceptual development; methodologies outlined and presents examp...

The transition to more sustainable energy systems has set about redefining the social roles and responsibilities of citizens. Implicit in this are expectations around participation, though the precise contours of what this might mean remain open. Debates around the energy transition have been skewed towards a normative construct of what it means to...

Energy transition debates have been characterized by a strong emphasis on the technical implications of shifting away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, with little consideration of social contexts. This is now changing, with a growing emphasis on reconfiguring the social aspects of energy, particularly in terms of introducing more demo...

Background Every energy transition has had its winners and its losers, both economically and in terms of social justice and community cohesion. The current transition is no different given the complex, intersecting matrices of power and experience that influence the key stakeholders and actors involved. Local oppositions to the deployment of renewa...

This chapter further develops these ideas of energy citizenship, particularly the concept of the ‘good citizen’ in the context of system change as it appears to be emerging as the rapidly normative notion shaping citizen engagement in energy. Broadening this discussion on emerging normative expressions, assumptions, and expectations that influence...

This chapter begins by introducing the reader to the many competing visions, expectations, and role(s) being placed on citizens in the energy system as it progresses to net zero. It introduces the reader to past energy transitions and highlights the social and cultural drivers of technical innovation, along with the unequal exchanges that arose as...

This chapter connects the discourse on participation and energy citizenship to reframe participation as a vehicle for citizens’ agency, rather than a mechanism for government authorities to gain legitimacy, acceptance, or control. The chapter explores how existing modes of participation can be enriched by incorporating a view of energy citizenship...

This chapter concludes the book. Despite considerable effort having been already expended within the academic communityṇ on conceptualising energy citizenship, a fundamental question remains. How can ideas around energy citizenship be harnessed for actioning fairer and more just citizen participation in the energy transition? Drawing together the k...

This chapter moves the discussion on by examining the conceptualisation of energy citizenship. Situating the reader within the authors’ understanding of energy systems as fundamentally social structures, the chapter adopts an inclusive perspective of the citizen in the energy domain. It posits that an energy citizen is not something one becomes, no...

This book develops a deeper understanding of what is an increasingly applied term across policy cycles and academic discourses, ‘energy citizenship’. It will provide the reader with five distinct chapters, with each in turn examining a specific aspect of the concept and how it has manifested in public discourses.

This chapter explores the recent phenomenon of ‘energy citizenship’ and the role it is expected to play in the current global energy transition. If there is to be an essentially just transition, those tasked with leading it must account for the intersectional experiences of all citizens when planning and building the new energy infrastructures of t...

The human use of energy is inherently understood and experienced through socially constructed frameworks. However, the degree of engagement with this topic on the part of humanities and the social sciences has until recently been uneven at best. This seems strange given current upheavals experienced in Europe and across the globe as the climate and...

SafeWAVE Deliverable 7.5, ‘Tailored Ocean Literacy Programmes Focusing on Wave Energy’, uses the framework developed in Deliverable 7.4 to organise an approach for creating education and public engagement (EPE) programmes that are tailored to the specific circumstances in each of the communities of the project’s four member countries – France, Irel...

Energy poverty can manifest itself in households unable, for reasons of access and/or affordability, to source clean energy for necessities such as heat, light, cooling, cooking, and appliance use, or having to use an excessive portion of their disposable income to provide these essentials. Developing more effective responses to this social challen...

For the first time in decades, the price pressures and economic upheaval primarily caused by the global energy crisis – sparked by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and post-COVID pandemic supply chain stress – have led to a rise in the number of people without access to energy. The human consequences of energy poverty include a significant deterioratio...

Living with Energy Poverty: Perspectives from the Global North and South expands our collective understanding of energy poverty and deepens our recognition of the phenomenon by engaging with the lived experiences of energy-poor households across different contexts. Understanding the lived experience of energy poverty is an essential component in t...

This chapter discusses findings from an ongoing Horizon 2020 project, EnergyMeasures, relating to identifying and recruiting energy-poor households in seven participating countries (BE, BG, IE, MK, NL, PL, and UK). Understanding the wicked problem of energy poverty is not an easy undertaking and is replete with multiple layers of complexity across...

Despite the benefits of marine renewable energies (MRE) to the decarbonisation, public opposition has often been posed to MRE projects. This opposition is one of the reasons slowing down Europe´s energy transition towards clean energies. Aside from one wave energy production farm operating in Europe, other developments are still at pilot or prototy...

This chapter explores the phenomenon of ‘energy citizenship’ and the role it is expected to play in the current global energy transition. If there is to be an essentially just transition, those tasked with leading it must account for the intersectional experiences of all citizens when planning and building the new energy infrastructures of the low-...

The European Atlantic Ocean offers a high potential for marine renewable energy (MRE), which is targeted to be at least 32% of the EU’s gross final consumption by 2030. The European Commission is supporting the development of the ocean energy sector through an array of activities and policies: the Green Deal, the Energy Union, the Strategic Energy...

The development and deployment of novel technologies, including those associated with marine renewable energy, are vital for the ongoing decarbonisation of our energy system. However, technology on its own is not sufficient to realise the energy transition away from fossil fuels. Non-technical barriers – such as regulatory, economic, environmental...

Traditionally, the relationship between engineering, social sciences, and the humanities (SSH) has often been, to varying degrees, fraught, imbalanced and/or non-existent. Engineering has oftentimes been guilty of envisaging SSH as either providing a ‘soft’ window dressing or counterbalance to ‘hard’ projects representing ‘real’ progress, or to be...

This deliverable presents a treatment of existing and emerging ideas of citizenship in the energy system and around energy more generally. An analysis of modes of (citizen) participation and related manifestations of energy citizenship is forwarded. This report – the first of two on characterizing and (re)conceptualizing expressions of energy citiz...

With global greenhouse gas emissions on the rise, the higher education sector has recognised the part it must play in reducing its carbon footprint, setting an example for others to follow in the global fight against climate change. In 2019 University College Cork undertook the complex task of designing and developing a Climate Action Plan, beginni...

Given the deep, transformative, and systemic changes needed to transition to low-carbon energy configurations, the current level of socio-political discourse remains calcified around classic understandings of the role of the citizen and normative representations of participation. These are almost exclusively framed in terms of consumption behaviors...

Writing in the late 1980s, Jon Fiske describes reality as “always encoded [and most especially] by the codes of our culture”. The energy transition is one of the latest sets of realities that comes with its own encoded messaging and nomenclatures. Citizens are increasingly expected to actively participate in the energy domain and play their part in...

Past energy transitions have been characterised by strategic geopolitical and socio-economic drivers that rarely considered issues of social justice or community cohesion. This is interesting given the profound systemic reconfigurations that took place. The current transition to low-carbon energy has seen a departure of sorts, particularly in terms...

Notwithstanding the diversification discourses on the energy transition, the supply of energy substantially remains organized along traditional power structures, namely largescale generation facilities and centralized grids. Until recently, there has been little or no citizen involvement beyond that of consumer, bounded by the supply and demand par...

The disposal of decommissioned wind turbine blades is becoming a problem to the wind sector, with industry calling for a landfill ban by 2025, and recycling not yet commercially available. Repurposing of the blade material into second life applications is an option that is being explored. A 5.5m pedestrian bridge was commissioned by the County Coun...

Imagining 2050 introduced a novel approach that we termed the ‘deliberative futures workshop’, which integrates deliberative dialogues into wider democratic and multi-stakeholder systems. Central to the project’s success was its ability to harness the extensive cross-disciplinary nature of the team and the trans-disciplinary nature of the resear...

Decades of techno-economic energy policymaking and research have meant evidence from the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH)—including critical reflections on what changing a society’s relation to energy (efficiency) even means—have been underutilised. In particular, (i) the SSH have too often been sidelined and/or narrowly pigeonholed by policyma...

This deliverable (7.4) focuses on creating a framework for the development and implementation of education and public engagement (EPE) programs. To accomplish this task, we begin by developing a generic framework that is applicable to any type of EPE program. Owing to the general nature of such an endeavour, our methodology rests primarily on a fou...

53,000 tonnes of blade waste from on-shore wind farms will potentially be generated in Ireland by 2040. The recycling of blades, which are made from composite material, is costly and thus far no high volume recycling solution exists. Repurposing blades into second life structures is an alternative which is gaining in popularity, but has many challe...

Background Transition discourses are gaining prominence in efforts to imagine a future that adequately addresses the urgent need to establish low carbon and climate resilient pathways. Within these discourses the ‘public’ is seen as central to the creation and implementation of appropriate interventions. The role of public engagement in societal tr...

Despite the clear benefits of marine renewable energies (MRE), opposition has often been posed to MRE development projects. This opposition has hindered and even slowed down the process to Europe´s energy transition towards clean energies. Wave energy is, with a bit more than two decades of modern history, at an early stage of development. So far,...

The background to this research is that across the world there will be 200,000 tonnes of wind turbine blade waste to be disposed of each year from 2033. The purpose of the research is to compare the relative sustainability of alternative ways to deal with this waste, these being: landfill, incineration with heat recovery, co-processing in cement ki...

This deliverable comprises a critical review of selected Education and Public Engagement (EPE) programmes associated with marine energy test site and infrastructure deployments. Information on selected case studies was gathered through a literature view and interviews of key informants. The methods used for EPE in each of the cases were analysed, k...

This deliverable comprises a brief report presenting the initial characterisations of the host communities associated with five marine renewable energy test sites in France, Ireland, Portugal and Spain.

The Deliberative Futures Toolkit includes a series of guiding pieces that offer advice on good practice around engagement and provides guidance for those interested in incorporating different futures-thinking tools into their practice, either individually or as part of their wider process. To support the application of these tools we showcase the w...

The Re-Wind Design Atlas prepared in 2018 by the Re-Wind research team members is being made available to the public under a Creative Commons license - Re-Wind Resign Atlas by Re-Wind Team is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Architectures of Earth System Governance - edited by Frank Biermann May 2020

Energy transitions of the past have been largely characterised by geopolitical and socio-economic drivers that rarely considered issues of social justice or community cohesion, which invariably arose in response to the systemic reconfigurations involved. The current transition to a low-carbon energy system is a departure from this, both in terms of...

Energy transitions of the past have been largely characterised by geopolitical and socio-economic drivers that rarely considered issues of social justice or community cohesion, which invariably arose in response to the systemic reconfigurations involved. The current transition to a low-carbon energy system is a departurefrom this, both in terms of...

The proceedings of the Innovative Methods of Community Engagement: Toward a Low Carbon, Climate Resilient Future workshop have been developed by the Imagining2050 team in UCC and the Secretariat to the National Dialogue on Climate Action (NDCA). The NDCA also funded the workshop running costs. The proceedings offer a set of recommendations and insi...

There is an increasing number of regulatory and public policy initiatives aimed at improving building energy efficiency, recognizing the importance of the built environment to achieve lower energy-related emissions. However, these efforts have generally focused on the building scale. A comprehensive reduction of carbon emissions from construction r...

This paper situates itself within research identifying sustainable energy transition frameworks that best facilitate the technology shift needed to realise a low-carbon society. How local people continually (re)negotiate the many power dynamics, integral to engaging in the energy system, is represented using the perspectives of people living in six...

This report presents a number of business models that have the potential to contribute meaningfully to the energy transition. Building on earlier deliverables, most notably D2.3 Report on novel business models and main barriers in the EU energy system, D5.3 Energy Management Approaches for Sustainable Communities and earlier deliverables D6.1, D6.2...

This deliverable reports on the research carried out on new policy mixes and innovative cooperation mechanisms that have the potential to support transitions. In addition to the key findings emerging from WP5, the report has also applied a number of the lessons learned from Task 4.1 to develop the cooperation mechanisms that will prove useful to po...

This article explores the implications of participation for Environmental Policy Integration (EPI), through the window of Irish energy policy, employing concepts of ‘energy democracy’ and ‘energy citizenship’. Our analysis of a consultation process on energy policy identifies distinctive narratives, with different idealisations of energy citizens....

Behaviour, practices and culture constitute a powerful human factor in the energy system; in particular the interactions between technologies, practices and norms lock individuals in to certain patterns of (often inefficient) energy use. Consequently, behaviour change has gained traction amongst policymakers as a key area of intervention given the...

This paper outlines the methodology of a Knowledge and Communication Platform (KCP) as part of the Horizon2020 project Energy System Transition Through Stakeholder Activation, Education and Skills Development (ENTRUST). The ENTRUST project provides a mapping of Europe’s energy system and an in-depth understanding of how human behaviour around energ...

This report summarises the outputs from three distinct strands of research carried out for the ENTRUST Horizon 2020 research project from work packages (WPs) 2, 3 and 4. An overview of each deliverable from these WPs is provided with outlines of respective methodologies employed and a discussion of key findings for each. This information is then sy...

Notwithstanding the acknowledged limits that universities and third level institutions can, or should, play in developing sustainability citizenship (Foster 2001; McGregor 2013), this paper considers the journey towards sustainability undertaken by University College Cork (Reidy et al. 2015) within the wider Green Campus movement in Ireland (Ryan-F...

This report investigates everyday domestic energy practices across ENTRUST’s six participating communities. Exploring the advantages of social practice approaches to the everyday consumption of energy in comparison to narrow behaviourist models, the report expands on the importance of developing an intersectional understanding of the multiple socia...

European energy systems are currently undergoing a profound technological transformation towards low-carbon, socio-economic frameworks. This energy transition has to date largely focused on top-down, technocratic solutions that rarely incorporate the human dimension and as such underline a significant potential weakness of those efforts. By recogni...

Bottom-up and practice-based social innovations need to be incorporated in an integrated manner to achieve the required paradigm shift for energy system change. This Deliverable asks “how can new technologies and practices be best supported/disseminated to achieve ‘lift-off’ and impact?” Innovation studies approaches, including Strategic Niche Mana...

Exploring and utilising the concept of intersectionality as research paradigm, methodological guidance, and as a tool of analysis, this report provides a rich description of the perceptions and attitudes towards the energy system and large-scale energy technologies amongst the participants from ENTRUST’s six communities of practice. Drawing on the...

This is a reflection on reflexivity in transdisciplinary sustainability transitions research, a reflection on conversations and collaboration - but not a worked out position in any sense. It transcends several projects including ENTRUST (H2020); Climate Change, Behaviour and Community Response - A Blueprint for Action; Environmental and Climate Pol...

While it is widely accepted that we are witnessing an ongoing and profound technological transformation of the European energy system, to date there has been a tendency towards what can only be described as rather top-down, technocratic solutions. Usually, initiatives designed to promote this transition have incorporated human expectations and expe...

Oral presentation on the topic of ”energy citizenship”

The ENTRUST project focuses on the social dimension of the energy system, moving beyond the 'energy as a commodity' paradigm. Developing the concept of energy citizenship, the project takes an intersectional approach to analysing the effects gender, age, and socioeconomic status have on transitioning to a low carbon energy system. It aims to: Broad...

The transition of food-production and consumption systems to a sustainable, low carbon future presents a dauntingly complex issue, involving technical, political, social and theoretical aspects. Such a transition necessitates an exploration of new ways of production and consumption, new technologies and innovations and new regulatory and institutio...