ENCLUDE at the SIET Conference on Social Innovation in the Energy Transition
On the 18th November 2021, ENCLUDE project coordinator BinBin Pearce chaired the Perspectives on Energy Citizenship session at the SIET Conference on Social Innovation in the Energy Transition. This session aimed to bring together social science energy researchers interested in gaining an understanding of the various ways in which energy citizenship (ENCI) affects the clean-energy transition process across Europe. Both practitioners and academics were invited to attend this session which attracted around 40 attendees. The session began by introducing five social science and humanities large-scale European projects that commenced in 2021 in the field of ENCI (DIALOGUES, EC2, ENCLUDE, EnergyPROSPECTS, and GRETA).
Overall, the five sister projects had diverse definitions and approaches on the ENCI. For example, for the EC2 project, ENCI is people’s rights to and responsibilities for a just and sustainable energy transition, while for the EnergyPROSPECTS project, ENCI refers to forms of civic involvement that pertain to the development of a more sustainable and democratic energy system. In terms of different focus points, while ENCLUDE will use a transdisciplinary process and approach ENCI on different spatial scales, GRETA will examine energy poverty and digital technologies that enable ENCI, and DIALOGUES will concentrate on gender and vulnerable groups. Due to the diverse research fields, methodologies, types of actors involved, and diverging sets of nationalities of the project consortiums, the results of the five sister projects are expected to complement each other.
The five project coordinators agreed to create an alliance of sister projects and organize regular meetings to update about their work and develop further synergetic actions.
