Citizen energy lost in sustainability transitions : Knowledge co-production in a complex governance context
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A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
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Date
2023-02
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Language
en
Pages
12
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Energy Research and Social Science, Volume 96
Abstract
Countries are moving towards renewable energy systems, which creates new requirements and pressures for the established energy policy frameworks. One emerging issue is citizen energy production in community level that has been given a central role also in recent policy reforms in the EU. However, one understudied topic is how the decision-making and action in the existing and potential citizen energy communities connects to broader energy governance. In this paper, we focus on one such type of actor, housing companies in Finland, in which mobilising collective energy action has become a policy priority. We build empirically and methodologically on a facilitated knowledge co-production process utilising mid-range transition arena method to understand the main challenges in engaging citizen energy action in the Finnish policy context. The process was organised with central government authorities, and it involved a diverse mix of stakeholders from housing companies, business, knowledge production and different levels of administration. The analysis shows how different types of knowledge from system knowledge to target knowledge and transformative knowledge are generated in transition arena process, and how the shared production of knowledge increases on each step, which is necessary for drawing systemic lessons in sustainability transitions context. Therefore, we learn that the enhanced role of citizen energy communities requires active and simultaneous coordination of multiple policy pathways, illustrated as digital information, policy coordination, energy service and neighbourhood collaboration pathways. We also conclude that the traditional roles given to citizen energy agency become transformed and require more nuanced conceptualisation.Description
Funding Information: In the European Union, the Clean Energy Package with revised directives has created a framework for the member states to provide stronger legislative support for citizen engagement in community-level energy actions [10,11]. These regulatory reforms are geared towards transforming the operational conditions for active, efficient and inclusive citizen-led energy communities to emerge in diverse contexts [12–14]. More specifically, the market access rules and the information supporting the distributed energy producers have been improved [10]. The legitimacy of the EU policies on renewable energy, energy efficiency and market reforms is considered to be improved by enabling citizen energy action at the community level [15].This work was supported by the Finnish Strategic Research Council project Collaborative remedies for fragmented societies [grant numbers 313013, 313014, 313015] and Academy of Finland project Digitally mediated decarbon communities in energy transition [grant number 348626]. The authors would like to thank reviewers for their thoughtful comments on the earlier manuscript versions as well as Hanna-Liisa Kangas and Lasse Peltonen for their input to the wider project. Funding Information: This work was supported by the Finnish Strategic Research Council project Collaborative remedies for fragmented societies [grant numbers 313013 , 313014 , 313015 ] and Academy of Finland project Digitally mediated decarbon communities in energy transition [grant number 348626 ]. The authors would like to thank reviewers for their thoughtful comments on the earlier manuscript versions as well as Hanna-Liisa Kangas and Lasse Peltonen for their input to the wider project. Publisher Copyright: © 2022
Keywords
Citizen energy, Energy policy, Housing company, Knowledge co-production, Transition arena
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Citation
Lukkarinen, J P, Salo, M, Faehnle, M, Saarikoski, H, Hyysalo, S, Auvinen, K, Lähteenoja, S & Marttila, T 2023, ' Citizen energy lost in sustainability transitions : Knowledge co-production in a complex governance context ', Energy Research and Social Science, vol. 96, 102932 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2022.102932