Alexandra Revez

The development of digital tools for energy communities is crucial as these can play a significant role increasing efficiency and leading to less grid congestion. However, these tools frequently suffer from a disconnect between technical design and end-user social contexts, leading to poor adoption and engagement. This study bridges this gap by providing a new empirically robust methodology for mapping and evaluating how social dimensions, derived from a scoping literature review and participatory engagement, can be applied to energy tool development. Through six deliberative workshops and two focus groups across three European pilot sites, we identified 19 key social dimensions, including trust, transparency, education, and social values, that influence community member motivation and behaviour. This forms the basis of a social dimensions framework which can be used to evaluate energy tools and improve their development and uptake. We then exemplify the application of the social dimensions framework to assess three distinct digital tools from the Enpower project: a nudging app, a planning tool, and a citizen renewable platform. The analysis maps specific application features against the social dimensions, revealing strengths and critical gaps in how each tool supports user motivations and collective goals. Our findings show that moving beyond standard usability evaluations to include a behaviourally informed, socially grounded assessment provides actionable insights for developers. This approach facilitates the translation of qualitative social research into concrete technical specifications, ultimately promoting the creation of more effective, engaging, and socially aligned digital tools that can better support the energy transition within communities.

The deliberative futures workshop is both a method and a model of engagement that is designed to support transformative change, thinking ahead, and getting communities involved in shaping their future. It promotes collaboration with experts, stakeholders, and communities in a co-productive process that aligns with deliberative action research. The process seeks to be inclusive of everyone with a stake in the future by facilitating the development of multiple tools for their involvement in the planning and decision-making processes, following the deliberative principles of equality, inclusion, and reasoned argument. The deliberative futures workshop embraces a diversity of communication and practices that recognize the systemic turn in deliberative democratic theory. The various techniques proposed draw upon multiple experiences, voices, and perspectives with a view to increasing and enhancing the number of “deliberative” moments within the process.

This chapter moves the discussion on by examining the conceptualisation of energy citizenship. Situating the reader within the authors’ understanding of energy systems as fundamentally social structures, the chapter adopts an inclusive perspective of the citizen in the energy domain. It posits that an energy citizen is not something one becomes, nor something one earns, rather it is something that inherently exists. This chapter expands the discourse on energy citizenship by exploring emerging (often normative) notions that shape citizen engagement in energy. It also acknowledges how engagement is framed by different processes, including political struggles for recognition and prescriptive institutional ideas about being a ‘good citizen’.

This chapter concludes the book. Despite considerable effort having been already expended within the academic communityṇ on conceptualising energy citizenship, a fundamental question remains. How can ideas around energy citizenship be harnessed for actioning fairer and more just citizen participation in the energy transition? Drawing together the key themes presented throughout the book, it seeks to conceptualise energy citizenship as a sociotechnical imaginary of the “roles that citizens could, or perhaps should play in the energy system” (Dunphy & Lennon, 2022, p. 435). Acknowledging its position as a contested notion, it provides an overview of its many expressions before summing up our definition of energy citizenship and the role it should take, along with potential avenues for future study.

This chapter further develops these ideas of energy citizenship, particularly the concept of the ‘good citizen’ in the context of system change as it appears to be emerging as the rapidly normative notion shaping citizen engagement in energy. Broadening this discussion on emerging normative expressions, assumptions, and expectations that influence how citizens participate in the energy sector, the chapter provides an analysis of emerging ideals of energy citizenship from a normative perspective, focusing on solidarity, cosmopolitanism, and resilience. Embracing this dynamic and evolving concept to redefine its normative significance for diverse communities and locations can significantly serve as a foundational framework for questioning the processes of inclusion or exclusion within energy citizenship discourses.

This chapter connects the discourse on participation and energy citizenship to reframe participation as a vehicle for citizens’ agency, rather than a mechanism for government authorities to gain legitimacy, acceptance, or control. The chapter explores how existing modes of participation can be enriched by incorporating a view of energy citizenship in the context of democratic processes to align the values of energy justice with the goals of the energy transition. It also considers the relationship between these modes of participation, expressions of energy citizenship, and its implications for energy justice. Finally, the chapter makes a link between how participation and energy citizenship as merged concepts may point the way to a “human-centred” approach to designing democratic processes to accompany major technological paradigm shifts within the energy transition.

This chapter begins by introducing the reader to the many competing visions, expectations, and role(s) being placed on citizens in the energy system as it progresses to net zero. It introduces the reader to past energy transitions and highlights the social and cultural drivers of technical innovation, along with the unequal exchanges that arose as a result. Noting the simultaneous rise of European colonialism and the transition to fossil fuel economies, the chapter also highlights how energy has framed geopolitics ever since. Questions of power and agency are also addressed, and while it does point to some optimistic developments in the recent past, it highlights the very real potential for the current energy transition to slip into a more dystopian future than has heretofore been promised.