Project summary

EnergyPROSPECTS (PROactive Strategies and Policies for Energy Citizenship Transformation) will work with a critical understanding of energy citizenship that is grounded in state-of-the-art Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) insights. Funded under the EU Horizon 2020 programme for three years, EnergyPROSPECTS aims to develop a broad understanding of energy citizenship as a policy concept, a sociotechnical imaginary, a knowing-of-governance, i.e. a social construction of desirable/normal civic agency in future energy systems.

The project will identify and examine a range of cross-cutting issues in energy citizenship, which will inform iterative typology development and criteria for case selection. Drawing on existing databases and a search for new cases, a selection of 500 initiatives, as well as mapping and typology refinement exercise to demonstrate the depth/breadth of the energy citizenship concept in theory and practice will be performed.

Forty cases will be selected for in-depth analysis exploring development, evaluation, intermediaries, institutions, governance and ICT in energy systems. Using a multi-actor perspective, an empowerment toolkit for practitioners and citizens will be developed, co-creating viable strategies, developing new business and social innovation models, and new forms of organisation to advance energy citizenship.

A critical part of the research involves analysing the external and internal contextual conditions as they support or hinder energy citizenship in its various forms. Based on the analysis the project will match suitable models and forms of organisation with different countries, regions and contexts, and will conduct a citizen survey to appraise the validity of various scenarios as well as discuss and refine results in citizen workshops and policy forums. This will produce practical policy outputs which will be revised with policy actors in knowledge exchange workshops.

Summary of objectives

EnergyPROSPECTS’s primary objectives are to:

1. Develop an innovative conceptual framework for the understanding of energy citizenship.
2. Identify diversity of types and empirical manifestations of energy citizenship.
3. Identify constraining and enabling conditions to active energy citizenship.
4. Identify and assess the more and less favourable outcomes and impacts of different forms of energy citizenship.
5. Enhance engagement with citizens, practitioners and policy-makers, analyse and design more effective ways of engaging citizens and other stakeholders.
6. Translate findings and insights into tools and interventions for citizens and practitioners, new business and service models.