Content uploaded by Bonno Pel
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Bonno Pel on May 11, 2022
Content may be subject to copyright.
1
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation rogramme under grant agreement No 101022492.
Energy Citizenship;
Ideals, Ideology and Ideal types in the Energy Transition
Pel, B., Debourdeau, A., Kemp, R., Dumitru, A., Vadovics, E., Schäfer, M., Markantoni, M.,
Schmid, B., Fahy, F., Fransolet, A., Thalberg, K.
Abstract
The importance of social and institutional innovations in the energy transition has
become increasingly evident in recent years. The quest for new institutional
arrangements and social relations has been accompanied by the proliferation of new
concepts: Energy democracy, energy justice, energy poverty and energy literacy are
interrogating and opening up the social relations that carry the energy system. These
concepts serve analytical purposes, but they also provide tools for critical diagnosis and
transformative action. Scholars, activists and politicians deploy these terms to introduce
new social constructions, counter-narratives and imaginaries of an energy system that-
by certain standards – is more sustainable and organised in a just manner. A particularly
prominent example of these new imaginaries is energy citizenship. Coined originally as
an emancipatory concept and as an alternative imaginary of capable and involved
citizens, it has also been proven to be vulnerable to ideological appropriation and narrow
instrumental interpretations. The tendencies towards responsibilisation, exclusion and
reproduced power inequalities are well-known in studies of participatory governance,
empowerment and sustainability transitions.
This paper argues however that ENCI should not be mistaken for yet another
buzzword. Rather than rejecting the concept, it needs to be taken seriously as an
emerging governmentality and as a set of ideals that are meaningful to people that try to
make sense of the current phase of the energy transition. Our critical-constructive
analysis identifies three interrelated clusters of challenges in ENCI research: These
pertain to, 1) the multiplicity of ideals; 2) the performativity of idealizing social
constructions and 3) the associated methodological challenges of operationalizing the
concept into concrete empirical observables and relevant ‘cases of energy citizenship’.
This operationalization is arguably a crucial step in the scientific-societal co-production
of models and practices of sustainable, democratic or otherwise desirable forms of energy
citizenship.
1 Introduction
The energy transition involves innovations in multiple elements of socio-technical
energy systems. Among those, the importance of social and institutional innovations has
become increasingly evident in recent years (Wittmayer et al. 2020). The quest for new
institutional arrangements and social relations has been accompanied by the
proliferation of new concepts such as energy democracy (Wahlund & Palm 2022), energy
justice (Jenkins et al. 2016), energy poverty (Bouzarovski et al. 2012) and energy literacy
(Chodkowska-Miscczuk et al. 2021). Scholars, practitioners, activists and politicians
deploy these concepts to introduce new social configurations, counter-narratives and
imaginaries of a re-defined energy system that is organized in a more – by certain
2
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation rogramme under grant agreement No 101022492.
standards – ‘sustainable’ and ‘just’ manner. Therefore, apart from their analytical
purposes, they also inform critical diagnosis and transformative action: They challenge
the social relations that sustain the energy system, and propose ways to change them.
A particularly prominent example of these new concepts is energy citizenship
(hereafter ENCI). Coined originally as an emancipatory idea and as an alternative
imaginary of capable, energy-aware, involved citizens (Devine-Wright 2007), it has also
been proven to be vulnerable to ideological appropriation and narrow instrumental
interpretations: The narrative of empowered, self-organizing citizenship becomes
constraining, the less means and capacities one has to become that active citizen (Lennon
et al. 2020). Such tendencies towards (overdemanding) responsibilisation, exclusion and
reproduced power inequalities are well-known in studies of participatory governance,
empowerment and sustainability transitions (Swyngedouw 2005; Taylor Aiken 2019).
Meanwhile, ENCI remains under the cloud observed earlier for community energy
(Radtke & Ohlhorst 2016) and for political participation more generally: It tends to be
enacted mainly by particular social groups, notably the more affluent and the higher-
educated citizens.
Against this background of reasonable doubts, this paper argues that the ENCI
concept should (nevertheless) be taken seriously. Rather than dismissing it as yet
another ‘buzzword’, it deserves attention as an emerging governmentality (Rose et al.
2006) that introduces new roles, responsibilities and identities of individuals. Ringholm
(2022) underlines for example how ENCI can be appreciated as an initiative towards
institutional innovation. Likewise, ENCI is relevant as an emergent knowing-of-
governance (Voß & Freeman 2016): ENCI exists as concrete activities of citizens, but also
as a set of shared assumptions across the energy field about the importance of energy
transition governance through citizen-led governance, civic duties, and individual rights
and capabilities. This individual-focused imaginary of change distinguishes ENCI from
energy democracy discourses (Wahlund & Palm 2022).
As far as it is adopted widely - and it seems to be case that research projects,
governments, NGOs as
well as energy suppliers
(Cf. Figure 1) have
developed a fondness for
the discourse - ENCI
discourse creates new
perspectives for, and
acknowledgement of, the
roles and responsibilities
of citizens in the energy
transition. Moreover,
other than similar
knowings-of-governance
such as ‘social
innovation’ or
‘transition’, ENCI is a
normatively pronounced
concept. It corresponds
with a set of ideals, often rooted in long traditions of citizenship and community action,-
that are meaningful to individuals and organisations who try to deal the current advanced
phase (Markard 2018) of the energy transition.
Figure 1: ’In which phase of the energy transition are
you?’Advertisement (in Dutch) of energy supplier Engie
(Belgium). Web capture 28/05/22
3
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation rogramme under grant agreement No 101022492.
Given these multiple meanings and uses of the ENCI concept, it is clearly not a
straightforward research subject. It indicates both a set of energy transition ideals and
ideologies as well as a set of concrete energy-transitioning activities. It is both a label and
an empirical phenomenon. Both of these aspects need to be taken seriously. When
neglecting the former, ENCI research is vulnerable to drifting into uncritical empiricism
and simplistic instrumentalist accounts in which ENCI features as the unequivocal
solution to certain problems. When neglecting the latter, ENCI could remain stuck in
abstract and practically irrelevant critiques.
Our critical-constructive analysis therefore identifies three connected challenges that
ENCI research needs to address
1
to do justice to its research object. These pertain to:
1) the multiplicity of ideals, and the need for a
normative
framework;
2) the challenge to the address the gaps that exist between idealizing social
constructions and ENCI practices, i.e. the need for a
critical social-theoretical
framework;
3) the methodological challenges of operationalizing the concept into concrete
empirical observables, relevant ‘cases of energy citizenship’ and insights into key
conditioning factors.
What are the societal conditions conducive to the thriving of
engaged, sustainability-oriented, democratic or otherwise desirable forms of
energy citizenship?
The latter indicates the need for an
empirical-operational
framework.
The latter operationalization is arguably crucial in the scientific-societal co-
production of energy citizenship models and best practices:
What is (and isn’t) energy
citizenship? Is it more about energy or more about citizenship? Where can we find it?
The
key point is that ENCI research needs to develop coherence between these three
frameworks: The considerations of normative aspects (‘ideals’), the understanding of the
gaps between ideals and practice (‘ideology’) and concrete empirical investigation
(‘idealtypes’) need to inform each other.
2 Ideals: ENCI as crossroads of political projects
ENCI is a relatively new concept – even for those who apparently have been
practicing it for a long time already (Pel et al. 2022). Certain ethical values and political
ideals of energy citizenship have been around for a longer time. This reminds of the
political ideals associated with the concept, and of the normative dimension of ENCI
research. This normative dimension needs to be handled with care: ENCI is not a
normatively well-defined and widely agreed upon notion, but rather a crossroads of
ethical orientations and political projects. ENCI research therefore requires a compass, a
normative framework:
Which are the key ideals that define ENCI?
And paraphrasing
Solis-Navarrete et al. (2021):
What do we consider
not
ENCI, or
false
ENCI or
non-
desirable
ENCI?
A normative framework should include a specification of 1) relevant
ideals/ethical commitments; 2) the actors upholding them, and 3) a consideration of the
respective transformative and reformative ambitions.
1
In our ongoing research we have developed our own assumptions, empirical observations,
methodological choices and theoretical framings regarding these three requirements, and we present some
of them in this Viewpoint paper. Importantly, this paper is not meant to advocate our particular solutions
and approach. It serves to identify the key challenges of ENCI research more generally.
4
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation rogramme under grant agreement No 101022492.
Featuring as a research priority in the recent EU H2020 program
2
, ENCI can be
retraced to mission-oriented innovation policy and attempts to meet ‘grand societal
challenges’. This science-policy context raises research questions about the conditions
and empowerment practices conducive to the flourishing of energy citizenship. In this
context, ENCI is associated with goals of sustainability, democracy, justice, inclusivity and
social equality. In light of these widely shared values, ENCI is often positioned as a set of
unequivocally good behaviours that needs to be stimulated (Figure 2):
How to support
ENCI, and how to empower European citizens towards ENCI?
Figure 2: ENCI as a set of unequivocally good behaviours to be stimulated.
Similar questions have guided recent research programs designed to stimulate,
for example, social innovation, renewable energy prosumerism, or circular economy. As
Moulaert et al. (2017) evaluate critically with regard to these social innovation research
programmes, the prevailing instrumental approaches underestimate the normative
complexity at hand – social innovation is not a bolt-on instrument to support
technological innovation (see also Wittmayer et al. 2020). Furthermore, the promises of
unequivocally good innovation may be self-defeating: Kovacic et al. (2019) expose in
detail how the similarly ‘sustainable’, profitable, empowering concept of the circular
economy is marking an ideal that cannot be realized – unless one is doing magic with
circularity indicators. Unsurprisingly therefore, these concepts of unambiguous and
multi-dimensional progress are after some time dismissed as vague ‘buzzwords’. The
concepts are discarded, after going through the familiar trajectory of confusion,
deconstruction, ridicule and rejection. Particularly heavy critiques have been launched
against the
normative
vagueness of these concepts –
what, precisely, is
‘prosumerism’good for
(Brown et al. 2020)
? What is social innovation good for, beyond
the intermediate goals like collaboration and participation
(Ziegler 2017)?
2
This is also the funding source behind this paper.
5
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation rogramme under grant agreement No 101022492.
Is ENCI such an ‘empty signifier’ as well?
Various studies have aimed to map the
meanings given to it in practice (Rodhouse et al. 2020). By asking practitioners in the
energy field what the concept means to them, we generated the following word clouds
(Figure 3) in Germany, Hungary, Belgium (Wallonia) and Spain (Galicia).
Figure 3: ENCI interpretations in Belgium, Spain, Germany and Hungary
The word clouds illustrate
3
the following points.
The ENCI concept (in the various European non-English languages) is used only
seldomly by practitioners. Whilst generally endorsed, sometimes it is even mistrusted,
or associated with particular social strata rather than with the citizenry as a whole.
The latter became apparent in our Hungarian workshop.
The concept appears to be relevant and motivating, at least to practitioners in the
energy field. It is associated with ideals of democratization, energy justice, fairness,
sustainability, and awareness-raising for the energy transition.
Most importantly, ENCI appears to be associated with a multitude of ideals, ethical
orientations and political projects, promoted by citizens, associations, governments,
consultants, researchers and energy suppliers.Promoted by different actors for
different reasons, ENCI is at the crossroads between projects of democratization,
appeals for participatory decision-making, environmental awareness, consumer
awareness, energy security, as well as the opening up of new markets for the self-
reliant consumer.
3
Illustrating, as we are presenting not an empirical study but a conceptual contribution.
6
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation rogramme under grant agreement No 101022492.
ENCI is thus far from normatively empty or vague. On the contrary, it is a normatively
rich and complex notion. ENCI discourse is combined with various adjacent notions
(energy democracy, energy communities, energy justice, energy literacy, energy poverty,
but also the – not specifically energy-oriented - discourses on active citizenship,
environmental citizenship, resilient citizenship, empowerment, citizen awareness,
prosumerism, social innovation, and various discussions on the ‘new social contract’).
Some of these examples remind how ENCI discourse builds on more longstanding
discourses on citizenship (Ringholm 2022). Overall, these adjacent notions indicate a
broad variety of ideals.
A normative framework should
arguably also be specific about
whose
ENCI
ideals the research is focusing on. The
discourse is co-produced by different
actors: Horizon2020 research
programmes, European, national, regional
and local-level policies, the transformation
narratives of NGOs and social movements,
the professional field of renewable energy
technologies, and various expressions in
the visual culture (Figure 4) of
commercials, arts, and social media.
Each of these ENCI communications emphasise particular aspects, and they
juxtapose ENCI against various adjacent notions:
Beyond the passive energy consumer. Devine-Wright (2007) coined ENCI as a counter-
imaginary to challenge the (sometimes self-fulfilling) assumptions of the passive,
‘deficient’ energy consumer and to move beyond deficit perceptions of publics.
Beyond commercialized prosumerism. The adjacent notion of (renewable energy)
prosumerism has come under a cloud. This much-celebrated move towards
decentralized energy systems has proven vulnerable to commercialization (Brown et
al. 2020; Lennon et al. 2020). ENCI is in this regard a reassertion of communitarian
values of responsibility, trust and reciprocity.
Beyond ‘token participation’. Discussions on participatory decision-making have
frequently pointed out the need to reach beyond participatory arrangements that are
formally participatory but de facto providing little voice to citizens. ENCI fits in these
attempts to deepen, or radicalize, participation. It calls attention to practical, material
participation, often implying immediate investments and gains.
Beyond expert-led transition. Some accounts of ENCI underline how it revolves around
expertise, know-how, awareness, and energy literacy. Other than as a matter of
democratic voice or of environmental impacts, ENCI is then taken as an ideal of
emancipation, of re-appropriation of technology, and of changes in the relations
between expert and laymen.
Beyond energy-dependency. The Ukraine crisis has reminded all Europeans of their
(material and political) energy citizenship. In that context, ENCI indicates ambitions
to reduce the dependence on politically mistrusted energy suppliers. Apart from the
above considerations and the general considerations of sustainable energy
production, this political dimension marks how ENCI can be promoted for reasons only
indirectly related to either energy or citizenship.
There are thus good reasons to take an affirmative stance towards this fuzzy
Figure 4: ENCI in cultural representations:
Energy Autonomy (Carl Fechner)
7
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation rogramme under grant agreement No 101022492.
concept. ENCI bundles political ideals that are relevant to various people and
organizations. Beyond the specification of ideals and the actors inscribing them into the
concept, a third aspect to consider is a difference that cuts through the various ENCI
understandings: The concept is sometimes used along a transformative logic, i.e. to
mobilize resistance against the deep power inequalities that continue to define the
energy system and the energy transition. Yet on the other hand there is also a rather
pragmatic, reformative line of ENCI discourse: On these accounts it appeals to basic,
widely shared, traditional values of efficiency, pragmatism, assuming one’s
responsibilities, the roles of the public in energy transitions and collective maintainance
of collective goods like the energy system. This divide between transformative and
reformist ideals indicates the need for critical-theoretical engagement with ENCI.
3 Ideology: Beyond idealizing social constructions
It is important to conduct ENCI research with a framework that is explicit about
the normative ideals and ethical essences of the term. Yet this only works well when
minding the gaps that exist between ideals and practice, essence and process. Lennon et
al. (2020) usefully indicate how the imaginaries of energy citizenship and energy
prosumerism can turn from empowering narratives into disempowering ones: They
introduce responsibilities and expectations of contributions to the energy transition that
not everybody is in the position to fulfil. Energy
citizenship
, in contrast with the idea of
energy
communities or energy democracy
, refers explicitly to individual rights, duties,
resources and capabilities, and political participation of
individuals
(Wahlund & Palm
2022, Cf. previous section). ENCI – as far as it has become an influential discourse – is a
strongly performative and normalizing notion. One example of its performativity is this
ubiquitous question:
Have you, dear citizen, already switched back your thermostat?
Importantly, ENCI discourse develops along with technologies that allow citizens to see
how other household members are adjusting that thermostat – this comes with blends of
care and control (Sovacool et al. 2021). Furthermore, the appeals to civic responsibilities
become more pressing as long as it is primarily the landlord, the electricity supplier, or
the national and local government setting the controls. ENCI ideals cannot be fulfilled
single-handedly by individuals – they are realized in spaces formed around techno-
scientific objects (Latour 2005).
ENCI research therefore needs to work with a
critical social-theoretical
framework as well. This means being sensitive to the contradictions between ENCI
ideology and ENCI practice. It means exploring the societal conditions that ENCI
imaginaries and practices are shaped by. It means being attentive to the ways in which
ENCI discourse – including the adjacent notions outlined above– is itself shaping society.
A key task for a critical-theoretical framework for ENCI research is to reach beyond the
idealizing social constructions and the associated ideal-types: The ideals of emancipated,
active citizens may encourage individuals, but they also idealize and create expectations
of individuals ‘doing their part’.
There are many ways in which research can silently reproduce naïvely optimistic,
empirically misguided or overdemanding and as such disempowering assumptions. A
particular difficulty for ENCI research – and for similar ‘mission-oriented’ research – are
the various incentive structures and inclinations of researchers to focus on the best
practices, the immediate associations with certain pioneering innovators, and the stock
images of beneficial innovation through which everybody wins (Godin & Vinck 2017).
ENCI research should be fixated less on such
manifest
cases (Pel & Kemp et al.
8
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation rogramme under grant agreement No 101022492.
2020). It should shed more light on the relatively mundane and less heroic energy
citizenship cases. Well-known manifest forms of ENCI are the politically engaged citizens,
organised citizen summits, the environmentally conscious consumers, and the citizens
collaborating and associating in energy communities. These are the ENCI hits one gets
through Google images (Cf. Figure 3.1). Yet these recurring (and perhaps over-exposed)
examples are arguably only a subset of the energy citizenship as it exists in 2022. In the
near and distant future this picture will change further. The societal context has evolved
significantly since the early ENCI formulations of Devine-Wright (2007). ENCI is arguably
more diverse than the typical attempts to create a ‘dialogical democracy’ as described by
Callon et al. (2009:225). ENCI develops in the context of an energy transition that has
moved well beyond its initial stages. This also means that a broader range of individuals
becomes involved, and that ‘followership’ becomes as important as leadership (Geels
2021). It means that individuals struggling with eco-powerlessness (Kennedy and Givens
2019) become more important. Similar to the analysis of Ekman & Amnå (2012), it is
useful to look beyond the tip of the iceberg of ‘manifest’ political participation. Beyond
the actions of civic leaders and pioneers, it is important to consider more mundane forms
of energy citizenship. For example, Ryghaug et al. (2018) call attention to the new
technological affordances through which citizens rather silently shift into more active
forms of energy citizenship. Making invisible energy visible, these technologies evoke
increased awareness and environmental action (Marres 2012).
Addressing the gaps between ENCI ideals and practice, a critical social-theoretical
framework should also disclose the range of
latent
ENCI forms that exist alongside the
prominent, relatively more ‘manifest’ ones. This general insight is not easy to
operationalize
4
(Cf. next
section on this important
aspect of ENCI research),
but the general striving to
‘look beyond the tip of the
iceberg’ (Figure 5) is in
itself straightforward.
Figure 6 sketches how we ourselves have identified a range of these ‘latent’ forms.
They are the relatively underexposed counterparts to seven forms of relatively more
prominent, manifest ENCI:
4
Our project has set itself this challenge in its ambitious project proposal.
Figure 5: Critical social-theoretical framework: ENCI beyond the
tip of the iceberg
9
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation rogramme under grant agreement No 101022492.
Figure 6: ENCI: manifest/latent forms along 7 key distinctions (Pel et al. 2021:61)
Latent energy citizenship can arguably be found in the following seven categories:
1) Passive ENCI. The political ideals of energy citizenship tend to assume a certain
active, engaged, empowered form of citizenship. Its counterpart of ‘passive’ ENCI would
then appear to be an oxymoron. Yet this is too simple, considering that activity
presupposes activation processes (Pel et al. 2016). The longstanding theorisation of
citizenship has in fact shown certain shades of grey. One can think of Dobson's (2003)
account of Bryan Turner (1990), ‘A Theory of Citizenship’, in which both the
active/passive and top-down/bottom-up distinctions are underlined as key dimensions
of citizenship. ‘Passive ENCI’ also seems to correspond roughly with various forms of
‘latent’ political participation, as pointed out by Ekman and Amnå (2012: 287-288).
Examples of this are blank voting or non-voting, and more generally the various
politically behaviours of citizens that
on the surface
appear semi-political or non-
political. One could similarly
consider ‘passive’ citizenship as
the lowest steps on Arnstein’s
famous ‘participation ladder’.
‘Passive’ ENCI usefully calls
attention to the citizens who
have not even started mounting
Arnstein’s ladder – whether due
to disempowerment,
disillusionment, or disinterest.
Figure 7 by the Norwegian artist
Hariton Pushwagner
exemplifies the visual discourse
on ‘passive’ energy citizenship,
which exists alongside the
abundant images that express
the active forms.
Figure 7: Passive Energy citizenship
(Source: Pushwagner – ‘Soft City’)
10
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation rogramme under grant agreement No 101022492.
More generally, ‘passive’ ENCI is a complex remainder category. It arguably indicates
individuals with limited capacities, motivation and action, who supposedly need to be
‘nudged’
5
into ENCI. Yet what to think of those citizens who are actively involved with the
energy transition, yet not in ways immediately in line with prevailing ENCI political ideals
and ethical commitments? The Yellow vest movement is but one example of such active
citizens – whose actions have often been characterized however as undermining and
counter
active.
2) Collective ENCI. Who exerts energy citizenship? The individual citizen could be
considered the default understanding (Wahlund & Palm 2022)– citizens vote
individually, for example, and they have rights as individuals. Also from the psychological
point of view one can consider how the empowerment into ENCI revolves around
individual motivations, behaviours and identities. From the political science point of
view, it is also very relevant that political participation, and ENCI is arguably a form of it,
is often starting from the rights and duties of individuals (Ekman & Amnå 2012).
However, many of the ENCI ideals are hinting at groups, and
embedded
individuals. The
associated ideals like energy democracy, energy justice and community-based energy
seem to suggest that ENCI can be exerted by collectives like households, families,
neighbours, communities, and companies. It seems reasonable to understand ENCI
broader than in terms of the manifest, atomistic-individual forms, and acknowledge
collective forms of ENCI and embedded energy individuals. This fits with the
transactional perspective in social and environmental psychology, which incorporates
interactions with the spatial, physical, and material dimensions of contexts as key to
human agency and human action (Altman 1992; Bronfenbrenner 1974).
3) Public sphere ENCI. The political ideals of energy citizenship – as expressed, for
instance, by policy-makers and EU-institutions – seem often to embrace the political
agency of individuals and groups within the boundaries of the private sphere. Yet there
are also relevant counterparts to this ‘manifest’ side of ENCI. Traditionally, both liberal
and civic republican approaches of citizenship consider it even as a strictly public matter
– the private sphere has to remain private, and cannot be part of citizen life. ENCI could
thus be taken to comprise relatively latent ENCI practices as enacted in the public sphere:
Individuals acting on ENCI ideals in schools, or in the workplace - there is also ENCI in
universities. Furthermore, also the material side of ENCI gives reason to not confine ENCI
to its relatively prominent private sphere manifestations – the very boundaries between
public and private spheres are becoming more porous (Van Veelen 2018).
4) Hybrid sphere agency. When Devine-Wright (2007) formulated ENCI as a political
ideal, it was juxtaposed against the figure of the passive consumer. Along this logic,
energy citizenship can indeed be considered the institutional innovation (Ringholm
2022) counterpart to the
business model
innovation that renewable energy prosumerism
revolves around (Brown et al. 2020). The view of ENCI as primarily a citizen-state
relationship has recently become more prominent as governments are calling upon ENCI
behaviours to reduce dependency on Russian exports. Against this backdrop, ENCI as
exerted in the hybrid institutional sphere remains relatively latent. It seems important to
acknowledge these ENCI forms, however, considering for example how local energy
cooperatives are driven by
mixed
motivations and
multiple
institutional logics (Hicks &
5
Started up by two social psychologists, the company ’Bureau Duwtje’ (’little push’) produces amongst
others doormats with the ’gas free’ welcoming text as seductive message. Mensen laten doen wat je wil?
Draai eens aan één van de vier gedragsknoppen - NRC
11
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation rogramme under grant agreement No 101022492.
Ison 2018). In similar vein, ENCI research should consider how various intermediary
actors and boundary spanners are not only supporting ENCI, but also arguably constitute
forms of ENCI themselves.
5) Deep environmental citizenship. ENCI is often considered as a specific form of
environmental
citizenship. This understanding is prominent in the political programs
that consider it a lever towards a transition towards sustainable energy. It is hard to say
which forms of environmental citizenship prevail in ENCI discourse – the global
consensus on the need for ‘sustainable’ energy hides this from view. Yet what does
transpire through the various communications is that ENCI is sometimes taken as
shallow
, and sometimes as
deep
environmental citizenship (Stern 2000). Shallow
environmental citizenship lacks the profound shift towards ecocentric worldviews and
values. In these shallow forms of environmental citizenship, ENCI stays within the realm
of declared intent – the willingness, endorsement and ideological adherence to ENCI
ideals as often measured in surveys. Taking ENCI between these shallow forms of
declared ideals, we should arguably raise the bar, and limit ENCI to
deep
environmental
citizenship (ENCI as principled internalization as environmental impacts).
Yet how high
can we raise the bar, given the argued need to disclose the broader range of ENCI ‘below
the tip of the iceberg’?
6) Transformative involvement. ENCI is quite commonly taken to refer to a rather
pragmatic involvement in the energy system, in which, for instance, joint ownership is
viewed as a functional aspect. The policy discourses on ENCI emphasise participation in
decision-making processes on energy projects, and various concrete actions – ranging
from home insulation to initiatives
towards renewable energy
prosumerism. These concrete
activities can be assessed for their
costs and their sustainability
impacts. Representing the tangible,
consequentialist side of ENCI, these
pragmatic forms are prominent in
the newspapers (Figure 8). This
pragmatic understanding of ENCI is
reasonable. Early accounts like
Devine-Wright (2007) already
characterize ENCI as a shift from
‘deficient’ to knowledgeable,
capable, self-organising and
practically effective citizens.
Beyond these manifest pragmatic forms there are also less visible counterparts to
consider. Armstrong (2020:2) indicates for example that public involvement in the
energy system often transgresses the confines of specific projects:
“Instead of looking at
an individual project, regulation, or policy in its own right and the local effects, mobilised
publics and social movements may approach them from the perspective of broader
energy transition goals and climate change.”
Furthermore, Taylor Aiken (2019)
highlights how governmental programmes towards energy communities are prone to
instrumentalising approaches, neglecting the longing of involved citizens for community,
solidarity, authenticity, and for an altogether less rationalist mode of handling energy
Figure 8: Pragmatic involvement in the energy system.
Source: le Soir (2021)
12
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation rogramme under grant agreement No 101022492.
provision. In fact, the less pragmatic-utilitarian and more explicitly counterhegemonic
forms of ENCI are not that latent anymore: This transformative ENCI has been
documented in literatures on grassroots innovation (Smith et al. 2016) and social
innovation (Wittmayer et al. 2020), amongst others. What these transformative accounts
typically emphasize, is that the decarbonisation targets are not the only thing that matter
– and that democratization, justice and reconfiguration of power relations are urgent
transformative goals in their own right (Cf. Stirling 2014). In summary, there is thus a
broader range of transformation-minded ENCI to take into account – beyond its relatively
more visible and visualized pragmatic forms.
7) Laggards and late adopters. ENCI, in its various idealised forms, corresponds with
the ‘early adopters’ of innovations, the so-called ‘frontrunners’ in transitions, the
pioneers, the trend-setting citizens. On the scale of countries, it also appears to refer to
the guiding, leading member states in the EU that have somehow ‘advanced’ in developing
energy citizenship. The frontrunners and laggards model (Rogers 1983, Cf. Figure 9) is
based on postulated psychological features of adopters: Innovators (the first 2.5%) are
venturesome, early adopters (the next 13%) are respectable (serving as peers for
others), the early majority is deliberate (but less venturesome and less independent than
earlier adopters), the late majority (34%) is sceptical and the laggards (16%) are
traditional (they are said to possess almost no opinion leadership).
Figure 9: Innovation diffusion and the associated ‘frontrunners’ and ‘laggards’
As indicated earlier, these ‘early adopters’ are the archetypical tip of the iceberg that
is systematically over-exposed in innovation thinking (Godin & Vinck 2017). In transition
management, these ‘frontrunners’ are considered pivotal trailblazers of transformative
change (Loorbach 2010). Yet importantly, this kickstarting role of the ‘frontrunner’ is
closely tied to the first phases of transition, ‘pre-development’ and ‘take-off’. Arguably,
the energy transition has in various contexts already passed these initial stages (Markard
2018). Geels (2021) therefore argues to direct attention to ‘followership’ rather than
leadership. In other words, there are also several
innovation-theoretical
reasons to look
beyond the manifest forms of ‘frontrunner’ ENCI. The innovation diffusion bell-curve and
the distinctions of transition phases are particularly useful. Locating the manifest ‘tip of
the iceberg’ in broader schemes of innovation dynamics, they are one of the advances that
13
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation rogramme under grant agreement No 101022492.
helps with the crucial third requirement for ENCI research:
How to operationalize these
critical social-theoretical conceptualizations?
4 Ideal-types: Cases and conditioning factors
ENCI research requires a normative framework that specifies the political ideals
at stake (section 2). A critical social-theoretical framework helps to account for the gaps
between these ENCI ideals and ENCI practices (section 3). But it is important to
operationalize these insights in terms of concrete cases, and in observable ENCI agency.
For adequate communication on ENCI, we need appropriate and telling examples. For
policy, we need heuristics and strategic insight on active, sustainable, or otherwise (by
certain normative standards) desirable forms of ENCI. In the end, research needs to
identify the key conditioning factors that shape the further evolution of ENCI. The crucial
third task for ENCI research is an
empirical-operational framework
. Three key elements
of it are typology development, context analysis, and analysis of conditioning factors.
A first important step is
typology development
. This translates the relatively
abstract normative and conceptual considerations into more sharp categories of ENCI
phenomena. Operationalizing the complex ENCI concept into a set of well-defined and
empirically recognizable ENCI ideal-types, typology development prepares for
systematic empirical research. In recent years we have therefore seen various attempts
to classify ENCI, and adjacent concepts such as public participation and social innovation
in energy transitions (Chilvers & Longhurst 2016; Pallett et al. 2019; Wittmayer et al.
2021; Rodhouse et al. 2021; Ringholm 2022; Wahlund & Palm 2022). These studies also
show how difficult it is to demarcate and map the ENCI territory, and to systematically
account for the ENCI forms below the tip of the iceberg.
Having explored this bottom of the iceberg along 7 key distinctions, we do have
conceptual insights about the kinds of ENCI that seem relevant, yet are easy to overlook
– especially when limiting our understanding of ENCI to the idealized forms and ‘best
practices’ that we find in political visions, innovation programs and LinkedIn
communications. We have used the manifest/latent scheme as an
explorative
device:
Referring to social constructions, ideologies and perceptions of ENCI, it does not provide
a classification scheme for empirical analysis. What it does achieve, is call attention to
relevant distinctions and remainder categories. In Debourdeau et al. (2021) we have
risen to the challenge of condensing the various ENCI categories into a conceptual
typology. This condensation raises questions of conceptual delimitation:
Do we consider
‘passive ENCI’ part of ENCI, or would that overstretch the concept?
Shouldn’t we rather
limit ENCI to the active forms of it – whilst keeping the analysis of its passive counterparts
as analytical reminders of alienation phenomena, empowerment processes and
differences in resources?
Although still a conceptual exercise, this typology development
also introduced questions of observability:
The seven distinctions make sense
conceptually, but how could we tell empirically? Distinctions such as
individual/collective or shallow/deep environmental citizenship indicate relevant
spectra of ENCI – but can they act as distinctive characteristics of ENCI ideal-types?
Key
to the condensation into defining characteristics is that the seven kinds of relatively
‘latent’ ENCI display several overlaps. Accordingly, we have developed a conceptual
14
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation rogramme under grant agreement No 101022492.
typology
6
along two dimensions of 1) agency (disclosing a range including not only the
individual-atomistic but also the organisationally embedded and collective forms of
ENCI) and 2) reformative-transformative orientations (covering both the
pragmatic/shallow forms as well as the counterhegemonic forms of ENCI, a dividing line
that runs through the ethical-political discussions on the topic).
The adequacy of such conceptual typologies depends considerably on empirical
testing and refinement. Empirical testing clarifies to what extent the typology discloses
the empirical diversity of ENCI, and to which extent it takes us beyond the tip of the ENCI
iceberg. Further empirical analysis will also bring out to what extent the set of ideal-types
helps to anticipate the emergence of future ENCI forms (ENCI enacted through different
forms of agency, for example), and in which ways it clarifies the evolution of ENCI
practices: Similar to the ideal-types of Rogers (1962), one can consider how apparent
‘laggards’ can become ‘frontrunners’ – and vice versa.
This work towards systematically defined ideal-types calls attention to the
societal conditions in which these ENCI forms develop. A second element of an empirical-
operational framework is the empirical mapping of ENCI across countries, and the
comparative analysis of (more or less favourable) ENCI contexts. The production of such
comparative, systematic insight into ENCI contexts is of course a key promise of the
European H2020 research program on this topic. Important work on this front has been
done already, through national-focused or comparative surveys and context analyses.
This clarifies how ENCI is a geographically embedded and politically diversified
phenomenon. As indicated in Figure 3, the English-language term is translated and
interpreted differently across European contexts. European contexts differ in historical
legacies and citizenship traditions, and in energy systems as well– the European-scale
ENCI initiative REPowerEU to ban Russian gas runs counter to the latter differences in
fossil fuel dependency.
Also in these comparative analyses we encounter the challenge to look beyond the
tip of the ENCI iceberg. Empirical overviews of frontrunners (in ENCI, or in renewable
energy prosumerism, or in energy communities) abound, and various citizen surveys
continue to monitor progress and experienced challenges. The persistent methodological
challenge is here that frontrunners tend to
seek
exposure (as part of their attempts to
raise awareness and gain support), and that it is relatively much more difficult to recruit
‘passive energy citizens’ for surveys. Neither do they tend set up websites on their
‘passive ENCI’ practices, or on their lives as ‘laggards’ in the energy transition.
Still it is very well possible to chart and analyse how particular ENCI ideals have
strong roots in some contexts
7
, and less so in others. It can also be analysed how
particular ENCI ideal-types are more prominent - or recognizable – in particular contexts:
Energy cooperatives build on different Social Economy traditions across Europe, and in
these particular contexts they form regular parts of the institutional landscape already.
Likewise, the very individualized forms of ENCI are naturally more prominent in the
countries with an individual-focused culture. Comparative analysis can also bring out
how the ‘frontrunners’ are prominent groups in countries in which processes of energy
6
The typology will be refined through further empirical and conceptual work. The consolidated version
will be disclosed through separate publications. In the context of this paper, the typology construction
serves to illustrate the connections between critical social-theoretical and operational-empirical
frameworks.
7
The project is preparing for a PESTEL analysis of such contextual factors. It is too soon to build on the
proceedings – this element of the paper could be elaborated through existing comparative studies on ENCI.
15
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation rogramme under grant agreement No 101022492.
transition are just starting, whilst the followers and ‘laggards’ are gaining more attention
in the countries going into the next transition phases of acceleration and stabilization.
Such comparisons give a more empirically concrete and diversified insight into the ENCI
iceberg: Just as shadows move over the course of the day, it shows how particular forms
of ENCI become more and less ‘manifest’ along with changing societal circumstances,
inherited political systems and policies with different impacts on ENCI. Or put otherwise,
it shows how certain idealized forms and theorized ideal-types may be more relevant in
Brussels than they are in the various corners of Europe.
Yet there remains a third element of an empirical-operational framework that is
as important as it is hard to achieve. The key question for ENCI research
8
is arguably the
following:
Which conditions are conducive to its flourishing (i.e. its rise and growth)?
This involves ‘distal’ and ‘proximate’ factors. Regarding the ‘distal factors’, the general
contextual factors, the aforementioned comparative analyses have already brought
forward relevant insights. The German ’Energiewende’ has been intensively researched,
and there is increasing work on the countries that appear to be trailing behind this
frontrunner country (in passing, this shows how ENCI research has already started to
look beyond the ‘tip of the iceberg’).
Particularly elusive are the proximate factors, the concrete empowerment
mechanisms that explain how ENCI can flourish and specify what can be done about it.
There are abundant general insights on the usefulness of supporting (socio-economic-
legal-technical) structures, ‘intermediaries’, boundary spanners and ecosystems. Yet
ENCI is a complex concept, and a very unstable explanandum:
Which kinds of causal
linkages to focus on?
The normative and critical social-theoretical frameworks help to
specify this search for explanation. Seeking to explain negative and positive outcomes of
ENCI processes, a normative framework clarifies what could be considered ‘positive’ and
‘negative’ outcomes, and in which respects. It makes it more transparent that certain
‘positive outcomes’ are measured in line with certain ethical commitments and ENCI
ideals, and less so with others. Furthermore, the critical social-theoretical framework
provides the continuous reminder that ENCI should not be reduced to to its manifest tip
of the iceberg. Which conditions are conducive to the flourishing of
which type
of ENCI?
ENCI typologies help to narrow down the issue: Analysis could focus on the factors
influencing individual ENCI, or ENCI in the context of organisations, or forms of ENCI that
are transformation-oriented rather than pragmatic and reformist.
5 Conclusion: Ways forward for ENCI research
Energy citizenship research is in particular need of well-considered, critical
research approaches. As indicated, ENCI is both an empirical phenomenon as well as a
discourse, a label. As a result, ENCI researchers are at risk of winding up in (and
contributing to) an echo chamber of normative calls for ENCI, empirical observations of
ENCI, mappings of ENCI, explanations of ENCI, policy instruments for ENCI - and on each
occasion ENCI means something different. We have proposed to untangle, or deal with,
this label/empirical phenomenon duality by describing three frameworks that are
needed for ENCI research:
1) A normative framework that specifies the associated ethical commitments,
8
This is the main question for our project, but also for the research program and policy context that it forms
part of.
16
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation rogramme under grant agreement No 101022492.
political ideals and actors;
2) a critical social-theoretical framework that clarifies the gap between these ENCI
ideals and ENCI practices;
3) an empirical-operational framework that elaborates the above two into observable
ENCI phenomena, and into systematic insight on the societal conditions that shape
them.
Developing these frameworks for our own ENCI research, we have arrived at the
following working definition:
“Energy citizenship 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.”
(Pel et al. 2021: 64).
This definition summarizes, first, how ENCI is in the political-normative aspect not an
empty buzzword term. On the contrary, it appears to be a relevant term for various
people and organizations involved in the energy transition. It forms a crossroads of
political ideals. Second, the definition explicitly reminds of the various ‘latent’ forms that
can be discerned beyond the manifest (active, individual, pragmatic, etc.) forms. This
critical-theoretical consideration of ENCI ‘beyond the tip of the iceberg’ applies the
critical innovation thinking of Godin & Vinck (2017) and the account of latent political
participation by Ekman & Amnå (2012) to a topic where it seems particularly needed.
Third, the normative and critical-theoretical insights are captured in the differentiating,
conditional expression that the enactment of ENCI depends on different framework
conditions and states of empowerment. Analytically, this emphasises the importance of
solid research into these framework conditions. Ethically, this is an inclusive definition:
It acknowledges that ENCI cannot be simply presupposed or demanded, given unequally
distributed resources, capabilities and contextual conditions. The potentials of energy
citizenship are recognised in the literature (and by governments), but according to
Deflorian (2021) this may hide from view structural constraints to transformative
change. Rather than prefiguring system change, it can also introduce illusions of power.
We do not want to insist on any particular definition of ENCI. For example, it can also
be defined more straightforwardly as
‘people’s rights to and responsibilities for a just and
sustainable energy transition’
(Hamann et al. 2021:72). By contrast, Montalvo et al.
(2021:21) are less specific about the essence of ENCI, underlining more the processual
aspect of how
‘energy citizens can transition between engagement levels’
. This shows
how one can start ENCI research from either of the three normative, critical theoretical
or empirical-operational frameworks.
But whatever way one defines and investigates ENCI, in any case it is essential to
develop the three indicated frameworks to
some
degree, and with some coherence
between these frameworks
9
. If not, ENCI research falls back into distant critiques (lacking
operationalization), politically naive instrumentalism (overlooking how ENCI forms a
crossroads of different ethical commitments and political ideals), or empirical overviews
that do not do justice to the diversity of ENCI practices underneath the tip of the iceberg.
9
Ideally, EnergyPROSPECTS will at its conclusion be able to specify its particular ways of achieving such
coherence, and to visualize it in a conceptual diagram.
17
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation rogramme under grant agreement No 101022492.
References
Altman, I. (1992). A transactional perspective on transitions to new environments.
Environment and behavior, 24(2), 268-280.
Armstrong, J. H. (2021). People and power: Expanding the role and scale of public
engagement in energy transitions. Energy Research & Social Science, 78, 102136.
Barry, J. (2006). Resistance is fertile: From environmental to sustainability citizenship.
Environmental citizenship, 21.
Beauchampet, I., & Walsh, B. (2021). Energy citizenship in the Netherlands: The
complexities of public engagement in a large-scale energy transition. Energy Research
& Social Science, 76, 102056.
Bouzarovski, S., Petrova, S., & Sarlamanov, R. (2012). Energy poverty policies in the EU:
A critical perspective. Energy policy, 49, 76-82.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1974). Developmental research, public policy, and the ecology of
childhood. Child development, 45(1), 1-5.
Brown, D., Hall, S., & Davis, M. E. (2020). What is prosumerism for? Exploring the
normative dimensions of decentralised energy transitions. Energy Research & Social
Science, 66, 101475.
Campos, I., & Marín-González, E. (2020). People in transitions: Energy citizenship,
prosumerism and social movements in Europe. Energy Research & Social Science, 69,
101718.
Chilvers, J., & Longhurst, N. (2016). Participation in transition (s): Reconceiving public
engagements in energy transitions as co-produced, emergent and diverse. Journal of
Environmental Policy & Planning, 18(5), 585-607.
Chodkowska-Miszczuk, J., Kola-Bezka, M., Lewandowska, A., & Martinát, S. (2021). Local
Communities’ Energy Literacy as a Way to Rural Resilience—An Insight from Inner
Peripheries. Energies, 14(9), 2575. https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/9/2575
Debourdeau, A., Schäfer, M., Pel, B., Kemp, R., Vadovics, E. & Dumitru, A. (2021),
Conceptual Typology, EnergyPROSPECTS Deliverable 2.2, European Commission
Grant Agreement No. 101022492.
Defila, R., Di Giulio, A., & Schweizer, C. R. (2018). Two souls are dwelling in my breast:
Uncovering how individuals in their dual role as consumer-citizen perceive future
energy policies. Energy research & social science, 35, 152-162.
Deflorian, M. (2021) Refigurative politics: understanding the volatile participation of
critical creatives in community gardens, repair cafés and clothing swaps, Social
Movement Studies, 20:3, 346-363, DOI: 10.1080/14742837.2020.1773250
Devine-Wright, P. (2007). Energy citizenship: psychological aspects of evolution in
sustainable energy technologies. In Governing technology for sustainability (pp. 63-
86). Routledge.
Dobson, A. (2003). Citizenship and the Environment. OUP Oxford.
Eadson, W., & Van Veelen, B. (2021). Assemblage-democracy: Reconceptualising
democracy through material resource governance. Political Geography, 88, 102403.
Ekman, J., & Amnå, E. (2012). Political participation and civic engagement: Towards a new
typology. Human affairs, 22(3), 283-300.
Geels, F. W. (2021). From leadership to followership: A suggestion for interdisciplinary
theorising of mainstream actor reorientation in sustainability transitions.
Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 41, 45-48.
Hamann, K.R.S. et al. (2022), Interdisciplinary understanding of energy citizenship,
Deliverable 2.1 EC2 project
18
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation rogramme under grant agreement No 101022492.
Hicks, J., & Ison, N. (2018). An exploration of the boundaries of ‘community’ in community
renewable energy projects: Navigating between motivations and context. Energy
Policy, 113, 523-534.
Jenkins, K., McCauley, D., Heffron, R., Stephan, H., & Rehner, R. (2016). Energy justice: A
conceptual review. Energy Research & Social Science, 11, 174-182.
Kennedy E.H., Givens J.E. (2019). Eco-habitus or Eco-powerlessness? Examining
Environmental Concern across Social Class.
Sociological Perspectives
. 62(5): 646-667.
doi:10.1177/0731121419836966
Kovacic, Z., Strand, R., & Völker, T. (2019). The circular economy in Europe: Critical
perspectives on policies and imaginaries. Routledge.
Lennon, B., Dunphy, N., Gaffney, C., Revez, A., Mullally, G., & O’Connor, P. (2020). Citizen
or consumer? Reconsidering energy citizenship. Journal of Environmental Policy &
Planning, 22(2), 184-197.
Lindberg, M., Forsberg, L., & Karlberg, H. (2015). Gendered social innovation-a theoretical
lens for analysing structural transformation in organisations and society. International
Journal of Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation, 3(6), 472-483.
Loorbach, D. (2010). Transition management for sustainable development: a
prescriptive, complexity‐based governance framework. Governance, 23(1), 161-183.
Markantoni, M. (2016). Low carbon governance: Mobilizing community energy through
top‐down support?. Environmental Policy and Governance, 26(3), 155-169.
Markard, J. (2018). The next phase of the energy transition and its implications for
research and policy. Nature Energy, 3(8), 628-633.
Montalvo, C., Schlindwein, L., Ruggieri, B., Kantel, A. (2021). Framework for research on
energy citizenship emergence structure and dynamics. D1.1 of the Horizon 2020
project GRETA, EC grant agreement no 101022317, The Hague, The Netherlands.
Moulaert, F., Mehmood, A., MacCallum, D., & Leubolt, B. (2017). Social innovation as a
trigger for transformations - the role of research. Publications Office of the European
Union.
Pallett, H., Chilvers, J., & Hargreaves, T. (2019). Mapping participation: A systematic
analysis of diverse public participation in the UK energy system. Environment and
Planning E: Nature and Space, 2(3), 590-616.
Pel, B., Wallenborn, G. & Bauler, T. (2016), Emergent transformation games: exploring
social innovation agency and activation through the case of the Belgian Electricity
blackout threat, Ecology and Society, 21(2): 17
Pel, B., Kemp, R., (2020). Between Innovation and Restoration: Towards a critical-
historicizing understanding of Social Innovation Niches, Technology Analysis and
Strategic Management, 32(10), 1182-1194
Pel, B., Debourdeau, A., Kemp, R. Dumitru, A., Schäfer, M., Vadovics, E., Fahy, F., Fransolet,
A. & and Pellerin-Carlin, T. (2021), Conceptual framework energy citizenship,
EnergyPROSPECTS Deliverable 2.1, European Commission Grant Agreement No.
101022492.
Pel, B., Fransolet, A., Debourdeau, A., Losada Puente, L., Vadovics, E., Schäfer, M., Kristóf
Vadovics, Farády, A., Dumitru, A., Rebollo Quintela, N., (2022), Regional workshops:
‘translating energy citizenship’, EnergyPROSPECTS Deliverable 2.3, European
Commission Grant Agreement No. 101022492.
Radtke, J., & Ohlhorst, D. (2021). Community Energy in Germany–Bowling Alone in Elite
Clubs?. Utilities Policy, 72, 101269.
Ringholm, T. (2022), Energy citizens – Conveyors of changing democratic institutions?,
Cities, 126 (2022) 103678
19
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation rogramme under grant agreement No 101022492.
Rodhouse, T. S. G. H., Pesch, U., Cuppen, E. H. W. J., & Correljé, A. F. (2021). Public agency
and responsibility in energy governance: A Q study on diverse imagined publics in the
Dutch heat transition. Energy Research & Social Science, 77, 102046.
Rogers, E. M. (1962), Diffusion of innovations. Simon and Schuster.
Rose, N., O'malley, P., & Valverde, M. (2006). Governmentality. Annu. Rev. Law Soc. Sci., 2,
83-104.
Ryghaug, M., Skjølsvold, T. M., & Heidenreich, S. (2018). Creating energy citizenship
through material participation. Social studies of science, 48(2), 283-303.
Smith, A., Hargreaves, T., Hielscher, S., Martiskainen, M., & Seyfang, G. (2016) Making the
most of community energies: three perspectives on grassroots innovation.
Environment and Planning A, 48 (2). pp. 407-432.
Solis-Navarrete, J. A., Bucio-Mendoza, S., & Paneque-Gálvez, J. (2021). What is not social
innovation. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 173, 121190.
Sovacool, B. K., Furszyfer Del Rio, D., & Martiskainen, M. (2021). Can Prosuming Become
Perilous? Exploring Systems of Control and Domestic Abuse in the Smart Homes of the
Future. Frontiers in Energy Research, 9, 1-18.
Stern, P. (2000), Toward a coherent theory of environmentally significant behavior,
Journal of Social Issues, 56 (3): 407–424
Stirling, A. (2014). Transforming power: Social science and the politics of energy choices.
Energy Research & Social Science, 1, 83-95.
Taylor Aiken, G. (2019). Community as tool for low carbon transitions: Involvement and
containment, policy and action. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 37(4),
732-749.
Van Veelen, B. (2018). Negotiating energy democracy in practice: governance processes
in community energy projects. Environmental politics, 27(4), 644-665.
Voß, J. P., & Freeman, R. (Eds.). (2016). Knowing governance: The epistemic construction
of political order. Springer.
Wahlund, M., & Palm, J. (2022). The role of energy democracy and energy citizenship for
participatory energy transitions: A comprehensive review. Energy Research & Social
Science, 87, 102482.
Wittmayer, J.M., de Geus, T., Pel, B., Avelino, F., Hielscher, S., Hoppe, T., Mühlemeier, S.,
Stasik, A.,Oxenaar, S., Rogge, K.S., Visser, V., Marín-González, E., Ooms, M., Buitelaar, S.,
Foulds, C., Petrick, K., Klarwein, S., Krupnik, S., de Vries, G., Wagner, A., Hartwig, A.
(2020), Beyond instrumentalism: Broadening the understanding of social innovation
in socio-technical energy systems. Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 70,
December 2020, 101689
Wittmayer, J. M., Hielscher, S., Fraaije, M., Avelino, F., & Rogge, K. (2022). A typology for
unpacking the diversity of social innovation in energy transitions. Energy Research &
Social Science, 88, 102513.
Ziegler, R. (2017). Social innovation as a collaborative concept. Innovation: The European
Journal of Social Science Research, 30(4), 388-405.
