Siddharth Sareen

University of Bergen | UiB · Department of Geography

Since the early 2010s, India has become a global leader in the deployment of solar energy. The country has set ambitious targets, launched several international initiatives, and seen its installed capacity increase sharply. The aim of this paper is threefold: first, to identify the dominant political narratives that legitimate this massive deployme...

Energy communities can potentially advance just transitions towards low-carbon systems by devolving energy production and consumption to local scales. During vibrant debates on evolving energy geographies for more than a decade, human geographers have engaged with conceptualization and emergent models of energy communities in generative ways. We ar...

This chapter engages critically with carbon capture and storage (CCS), carbon capture and utilisation (CCU), and carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS). Beginning with a brief history of the development of CCS and the more recent move towards focusing on CCU and CCUS, it outlines some of the key controversies and debates surrounding these te...

CO2 emissions need to be reduced drastically to fight climate change and minimise the further increase of average global temperatures. The decarbonisation of the energy system aims at reducing CO2 emissions and is thus urgently needed. This transition is facilitated by inter alia switching to renewable energy sources and more efficient technologies...

The links between the political agendas of climate change, the energy transition, and energy poverty are multiple, complex, and overlapping. In line with European Union policy demands, Member States are implementing the various policies necessary to address these agendas, with an emergent focus on their synergistic potential. Successful implementat...

As energy systems become ever more closely intertwined in order to enable electrification and real‐time coordination across sectors, tracking the nature of change to ensure accountability during complex implementation processes presents novel challenges and requires renewed thinking on data infrastructures. For instance, sectors like electricity ge...

A nation undergoing accelerating energy transitions with ambitious climate targets discovers lithium. In recent years, Portugal has made headlines inter alia for running on renewable electricity for over a month, setting world records at solar auctions, closing its last two coal-fired power plants, and investing majorly in green hydrogen for region...

Digitalisation provides opportunities to decarbonise energy and, simultaneously, address social exclusion and inequality—but it is unclear whether and how these opportunities are realised. Three case studies investigate whether ongoing energy infrastructure digitalisation processes are accommodating commoning or enclosure, using a continuum of comm...

Solar energy has become the world's cheapest and fastest scaling electricity source. Multiple societal sectors are electrifying, and the scale and pace of change give some hope of near-future rapid climate mitigation through solar rollouts despite the bleak record to date. Critiques of utility-scale solar development foreground injustices like disp...

A just energy transition is as much about acknowledging and acting on the socio-material needs of marginalised classes and groups as about informing inclusive and deliberative policy-making towards more equitable energy futures. In democracies, energy social scientists hold a privileged position and special responsibility to do both, thus offering...

Environmental accountabilities span the full range of societal commitment to rapid low-carbon transitions or lack thereof. This realist understanding can be applied to ‘just transitions’. Societal commitment to just transitions is underpinned by the degree to which the socio-economic conditions and political entitlements of ordinary people influenc...

Energy poverty is a far-reaching concept that intrinsically bridges numerous fields of study, ranging from engineering to anthropology and medical science to social psychology. The profound implications of energy poverty on the quality of life globally have also led to a wide range of metrics and policies aimed at measuring it and alleviating it, a...

Transitioning to sustainable mobility systems is generally thought to require three approaches: avoid, shift and improve. We examine a combination of these in a city at the forefront of implementing transition policies, focusing on how the approaches interact and impact social inclusion. The Norwegian city of Bergen has pursued ambitious targets to...

Competing agendas are common within the sustainability field, given its complex and diverse social, economic, and environmental priorities. They can cause less effective policy results, where multiple goals can result in trade-offs and policy compromises. This paper proposes a conceptual framework: CompeSA – Assessing Competing Sustainability Agend...

Climate-related targets abound, but it is unclear how important they are driving actual transformations. Scholars have often taken a sceptical view of official climate discourses, including their ambitious targets, and instead turned their attention to civic, or 'real', action. In this paper we try on the opposite view. Contributing to a 'speculati...

Cities play increasingly recognised roles in global climate change responses: as change laboratories, spaces of opportunity, and as administrative and economic hubs that concentrate human and financial resources and needs. They host high climate mitigation potential and acute climate adaptation vulnerabilities. Scholarship flags conventional urban...

While sustainability statements crowd national and urban visions, unjust implementation of lower-carbon energy infrastructures for climate mitigation manifests in contexts of marginal rurality. We focus on solar energy infrastructure rollout in Rajasthan in Western India to argue for a response centred on the energy practices of, and the effects of...

This article enriches the existing literature on the importance and role of the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in renewable energy sources research by providing a novel approach to instigating the future research agenda in this field. Employing a series of in-depth interviews, deliberative focus group workshops and a sys- tematic horizon scan...

Automobility, including the infrastructures, technologies and institutions that created high dependence on private car use, has led to significant environmental and climate problems and notably high carbon emissions. Now cities are attempting to move beyond this failed regime by experimenting with a range of different mobility innovations. In this...

This article examines the potential adverse effects of sustainable transport transitions on justice. It is important for policy debates to consider how pro-environment policies may adversely impact social justice. We apply a broad conception of justice as comprising redistribution, representation and recognition to the transport transition in Berge...

Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) constitute an emerging energy transition paradigm, with an ambitious timeline for rapid upscaling to match the urgency of climate mitigation and adaptation. Increasingly networked and coordinated actors aim to realise 100 PEDs across Europe by 2025. This resonates with the mission orientation turn of the European Gr...

As renewable energy sources increasingly outcompete fossil fuels on cost and efficiency, novel questions arise around how, when, and where renewables can displace fossil energy. We need to understand fossil fuel displacement as a sociopolitical and spatial process. In this article, we focus particularly on the scales and practices of legitimation t...

Activity generated around smart energy transitions risks undermining a basic spatial planning principle: create better places for inhabitants. The possibilities unleashed by digitalisation have enigmatic force. Stepping back from this techno-centrism, this article asks: where are the people in these visions? How can energy sector digitalisation bec...

Recent efforts to involve digital technologies and renewables in the electricity grid have placed users at center stage in the legitimation of energy transitions. This move has been paralleled by an emphasis on users and energy practices in social studies of energy related to science and technology studies. This article builds on an eighteen-month...

This viewpoint argues for an explicit focus on digitalization as a key driver of transformative environmental change and innovation in the next decade. We hold that digitalization is more than a landscape concern. Our piece suggests three elements of a critical approach to digitalization: to examine its ubiquitous unfolding, to study it as a real s...

This paper addresses the implementation of technology-forcing policies in open-ended diffusion processes that involve companies and regulators as well as consumers and civil society actors. Mobilising insights from the societal embedding of technology framework and policy steering theories, we investigate two implementation dilemmas that relate to...

Micro-mobility market-making represents an under-studied but important aspect of urban transport sustainability transitions. Micro-mobility roll-out combines several critical elements: decarbonisation, digitalisation and public space interventions. We theorise the emergence of a micro-mobility market, drawing on innovation studies, micro-politics s...

Rapid roll-out of solar photovoltaic (PV) energy is a key component of decarbonising energy systems. Yet clear risks are involved, including footprints from land use and infrastructure as well as socio-economic inequalities. Where are the critical decisions about solar roll-out made, by whom, and to what effect for justice? The paper reviews and sy...

In their article on ‘sociotechnical matters’, Hess and Sovacool (2020) draw on extant STS scholarship to unpack ‘the black box’ of sociotechnical contributions to social science studies of energy. Notably absent in their synthesis is explicit attention to temporality and to the impact of temporal dimensions on the politics of material change. We ar...

What constitutes a sustainability transition? We identify sustainability transitions as premised on shifts in accountability relations – assessments of conformance with institutional controls coupled with application of sanctions, incentives, and subsidies – which structure the selection pressures that shape future demographics, technical practices...

Increasing recognition of the irrefutable urgency to address the global climate challenge is driving mitigation efforts to decarbonise. Countries are setting targets, technological innovation is making renewable energy sources competitive and fossil fuel actors are leveraging their incumbent privilege and political reach to modulate energy transiti...

How a country responds to a rupture such as the COVID-19 pandemic can be revelatory of its governance. Governance entails not only the exercise but also the constitution of authority. The pandemic response thus presents a real-world disruption to verify or problematize some truisms about national governance and produce novel comparisons and insight...

Solar energy rollout has environmental and socio-economic impacts vital for just low-carbon energy transitions. The modular characteristics of solar photovoltaics enable multi-scalar deployment. How do environmental and socio-economic impacts vary across scales? This understudied relationship impacts the socio-spatiality of solar rollout, who benef...

Smart electricity meters are a central feature of any future smart grid, and therefore represent a rapid and significant household energy transition, growing by our calculations from less than 23.5 million smart meters in 2010 to an estimated 729.1 million in 2019, a decadal growth rate of 3013%. What are the varying economic, governance, and energ...

Energy infrastructures co-evolve with and are enacted and acted upon by not only technical but also regulatory and institutional factors, as well as sociocultural contexts. As solar energy plants require access to land and the electric grid, the recent uptick in solar energy infrastructure features interplay with local specificities. This article t...

At a time of great urgency for transitions to sustainability in light of climate mitigation targets, energy infrastructure is in a state of flux. Expansions in renewable energy and the persistent grasp of fossil fuels over a historically centralised sector surface new challenges of socio-spatial and environmental justice. Where does new energy infr...

The threats climate change poses require rapid and wide decarbonization efforts in the energy sector. Historically, large-scale energy operations, often instrumental for a scaled and effective approach to meet decarbonization goals, undergird energy-related injustices. Energy poverty is a multi-dimensional form of injustice, with relevance to low-c...

As carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) gains policy traction and pilot project funding, CCS usually gets the limelight, whereas CCU is often overlooked. CCU, if feasible, has two potential advantages: it obviates risks and monitoring needs associated with long-term storage, and it creates economic value to offset carbon capture costs. Yet...

The increasing use of quantification in all spheres of society is paralleled by the rise of digitalisation. These intertwining developments not only revolutionise data treatment, but also its societal effects. On the one hand, they have wonderfully enabling societal effects. On the other hand, they give rise to complex ethical dilemmas that motivat...

This report presents 100 research questions that have been identified by scientific experts as key priorities for Social Science and Humanities (SSH) research on renewable energy, in order to inform and support EU-funded research and innovation leading to achieve climate-neutrality by 2050. The questions together aim to promote SSH research that co...

This policy brief is part of the ENGAGER 2017-2021 Action, supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology). COST is a funding agency for research and innovation networks. COST Actions help connect research initiatives across Europe and enable scientists to grow their ideas by sharing them with their peers. ENGAGER brings together...

Climate change is increasingly governed through local configurations that are characterised by voluntary action, weak institutions and uncoordinated efforts. The impermanent and iterative nature of such initiatives makes it difficult to determine their enduring and potentially transformative impact. This review systematises how the sustainability t...

For recent techno-economic advances in solar energy to enable sustainable energy transformation, society must address institutional inertia and entrenched resistance by powerful stakeholders. Legitimation of power and specific metrics produces institutional authority to govern energy transitions, by reconfiguring accountability relations between si...

Within the energy geographies debate on the uneven scalar effects of energy transitions, this article addresses the under-examined, increasing intersection of automation and energy transitions. Using a comparative case of national smart meter rollouts—the deployment of distributed energy monitors whose diffusion constitutes the foundation for layer...

Measures to control the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) are having unprecedented impacts on people’s lives around the world. In this paper, we argue that those conducting social research in the energy domain should give special consideration to the internal and external validity of their work conducted during this pandemic period. We...

With climate mitigation and energy transition impacts on vulnerable individuals becoming increasingly evident, justice considerations take on heightened relevance for energy governance. Yet, energy justice remains underinvestigated in relation to the potential of behavioural economics. Behavioural economics provides evidence that individuals exhibi...

Measures to control the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) are having unprecedented impacts on people’s lives around the world. In this paper, we argue that those conducting social research in the energy domain should give special consideration to the internal and external validity of their work conducted during this pandemic period. We...

In this article we introduce the special issue through framing the debate on the role of caste in India’s current land wars. We draw attention to how caste consistently mediates land transfers in present day India by pre-empting, undermining, or fuelling processes of social contestation, as well as the ways in which land claims in turn shape realig...

This chapter draws together five wide-ranging cases related to energy transitions. It articulates how practices of legitimation along four registers (discursive, bureaucratic, technocratic and financial) are present in each case to extents that differ based on how each author’s choice of sector and focus modulates their relevance. This chapter summ...

This chapter presents the central element of an accountability analysis approach—a typology of four practices of legitimation: discursive, bureaucratic, technocratic and financial. These are empirically derived and defined in generic terms as social relations premised on accountability. Their study can characterise accountability under energy trans...

This concluding synthesis argues that practices of legitimation can empirically deconstruct any given energy transitions case to identify mechanisms that constrain or enable accountability to decarbonisation with social equity enhancement. The versatile analytical application of these practices can advance environmental governance research on steer...

Using the concrete case of solar energy uptake in Portugal, Chap. 1 illustrates how energy transitions can be regarded as attempts to resolve crises of accountability. While Portugal is among the countries that lead globally on energy transitions, close attention to its apparently promising solar energy prospects reveals a paradox: progress has bee...

This chapter provides an overview of five energy transition cases by describing the questions posed to five authors to guide the flow of argument in their chapters and summarising case treatments with respect to accountability and legitimation. It links four proposed practices of legitimation with analytical takes on wide-ranging cases. The cases s...

“This compact book argues that ideas about accountability and legitimation – drawn from work on environmental governance – can open up new analytical perspectives on what is holding back effective energy system transformation. With bite-size chapters and illustrative cases that draw on the work of five expert witnesses, this is a novel intervention...

Energy poverty, a condition whereby people cannot secure adequate home energy services, is gaining prominence in public discourse and on political and policy agendas. As its measurement is operationalised, metrical developments are being socially shaped. A European Union mandate for biennial reporting on energy poverty presents an opportunity to in...

How can we enable equitable decarbonisation? There is a wide gap between power to make transformative decisions, on the one hand, and agency on the part of those affected by climate change, on the other. We converge scholarly strands to understand and address the causes for insufficient action towards equitable decarbonisation – the crisis of accou...

WG2 considers the operationalisation of a multi-scalar, COST-wide framework on energy poverty. In the first of a series of policy briefs, we provide an overview of what is currently known about energy poverty in COST countries, the range of indicators available, and ways to improve data provision. This brief focuses on the pan-European level. Futur...

The adivasi population represents a special case in India’s new land wars. Strong individual and community rights to agricultural and forest lands have been enacted for this group based on notions of adivasi identities as primeval, but without linking these to economic and political influence. This article interrogates the adivasi land question see...

The European Green Capital (EGC) award has become a familiar feature in a polycentric sustainability governance landscape increasingly characterized by fragmentation and voluntary initiatives. Unclear accountability for translocal connections renders these initiatives at risk of locking unsustainable practices into transitions. Seeking clarity, thi...

Urban energy transitions are key components of urgently requisite climate change mitigation. Promissory discourse accords smart grids pride of place within them. We employ a living lab to study smart grids as a solution geared towards upscaling and systematisation, investigate their limits as a climate change mitigation solution, and assess them ri...

In this chapter, Siddharth Sareen disaggregates the workings of the state at the village level. He interprets how a macro-level context of capitalist development is shaping the state in India’s rural forestland by contextualising multiple instruments of intervention within Jharkhand’s village life. Deconstructing three instances of access to and au...

Working Group 2: Indicators-developing an operational energy poverty framework • Deploy a wide range of quantitative and qualitative indicators to address the multi-dimensional issue of energy poverty. • Enable the systematic uptake of household, local and regional context-specific data on energy poverty. • Target the differential impacts and inter...

This article explores the challenges of transitioning towards future energy systems in a solar test field within the eco-community of Tamera, Portugal. We examine what findings can point to wider actionability and how. First, we consider how Tamera’s solar test field has addressed energy transition challenges. We unpack the nature of stability and...

Sustainable energy transitions necessarily comprise both socio-technical aspects as well as important implications for social justice. However, in existing scholarship, these are mainly treated as distinct phenomena. The purpose of this paper is to outline a comprehensive approach that pulls together critical aspects of both socio-technical develop...

Rajasthan went from very low levels of electrification and limited capacity to high levels of electricity consumption, greater access, and greater generating capacity over the last two decades. An important factor is that geographic variations within the state also lead to very different cost-to-serve conditions, although a single tariff is levied...

Gujarat’s power sector in the 1990s followed a path similar to other relatively prosperous states. A high share of industrial consumption helped buy the sector’s finances, enabling populist measures to agriculturists, notably flat rate tariffs and diminished accountability. This pattern shifted when a decade of competitive elections came to an end...

The Paris Agreement’s goal to reduce the risk of dangerous climate change can be achieved if greenhouse gas emissions peak by 2020, halve by 2030 and then halve again by 2040 and 2050. This is now technologically feasible and economically attractive but the world is not on this path. This roadmap focuses on the immediate priorities, and has three p...

Abstract The social sciences are increasingly called upon to engage with how decision-makers and stakeholders tackle climate and energy challenges. However, creating or taking part in these new arenas is not unproblematic, and arguably, social scientists have not properly reflected on what types of engagement are most useful. In this Perspective we...

The growth and development of solar energy, which is so important in the current global context, is determined by political economic factors, and in turn, has varied implications for energy justice. India's western region presents a complex context within which to examine why these trajectories unfold in particular ways and to what end. This articl...

This article unpacks the institutional bottlenecks and path dependency holding back energy transition in two part-desert states with a sixth of India’s land, despite potentially high scope for solar growth and a systemic move towards a sustainable profile. As heavily-indebted electricity distribution companies in Rajasthan seek to emulate thriving...

The indigenous Ho people of Jharkhand's West Singhbhum district have long coped with conflict over forests. Despite the importance wood holds for both marginalised and powerful actors, little is known about what determines informal logging locally. This ethnographic study of practices and discourses around logging in a central-eastern Indian forest...

This paper asks whether and under what conditions participatory local government can best nurture indigenous peoples’ democratic practice. Based on fieldwork in two similar Ho communities in the Indian state Jharkhand, we show that their village assemblies function differently with regard to meetings, wood access regulation, development projects, a...

Government services fail to meet targeted objectives in contexts of political instability. The links between enabling equitable access to these services and building a democratic state have not been sufficiently explicated in the local governance and state-building literature. The Indian state of Jharkhand, formed in 2000, is one instance where lit...

This article examines governmental development interventions and their local-level implications for access to and authority over resources, using a framework of assemblage practices (Li 2007) as an analytical strategy in a mixed-methods study in Jharkhand’s West Singhbhum. This insurgency-affected district, populated by the Ho tribe, has India’s la...