Rethinking citizen engagement in energy communities

Peer-reviewed paper 5-098-26

Transition to sustainable energy systems is fundamentally a social process, with community energy initiatives paramount if net-zero goals are to be achieved that are just, inclusive and equitable. Whilst traditional energy initiatives relying on top-down approaches may raise awareness, they seldom build the level of collective agency or democratic ownership required to encourage transition from passive to active citizenship. Engagement frameworks for community energy initiatives must facilitate shared ownership, collaboration, and place-based intervention. The starting point for engagement framework design is development/fostering of energy literacy, to equip citizens with the knowledge, skills, and confidence required to participate in shaping their energy futures. This then permits meaningful involvement of citizens in co-creating Energy Community imaginaries, ensuring citizens and stakeholders share same place-based vision from the outset. A community-centred engagement framework is described encompassing (i) energy literacy programme to construct shared meanings for technical terms used to describe smart energy systems and their operation in homes and neighbourhoods, and (ii) co-creation of energy community imaginaries. The programme was designed for two European Energy Communities; one facilitated by practitioners, the other by community members themselves. The latter deployment addresses a secondary research aim, namely, that engagement frameworks be explicable and robust enough to be facilitated by citizens in the absence of practitioner support, accentuating the potential of their longitudinal value. Successful design and deployment of this initial engagement framework is likely to encourage successful citizen participation in an array of downstream participatory techniques designed to deepen and maintain engagement in community energy initiatives.