Public Participation also transitions

 How can local communities become empowered to drive project development and meaningfully engage in the low-carbon energy transition? 

While we have experienced numerous energy transitions in the past, the current shift to renewable energy sources (RES) is different not least because of the diversity of drivers leading it. From disambiguations around human activity and climate change to the growing awareness of a plethora of energy-related inequalities arising from our dependence on fossil fuels, this transition is about more than just technological and political change, or even resource availability. It also involves significant social and behavioural transformations that question established historical narratives and challenge accepted understandings of democracy and economics.

Past energy transitions were almost exclusively driven by the exploitation of a new energy resource with little consideration for social or environmental consequences. Also, they were marked by top-down, highly centralised energy systems controlled by a limited number of corporate actors. The current transition, in theory at least, involves numerous different cross sectorial stakeholders that are more informed by public policy and is more likely to include the social groupings directly affected than has heretofore been the case. However, given societal responses invariably require a radical reorganisation of socio-economic infrastructures in order to accommodate change, this transition will not automatically be a just one.

https://energsustainsoc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13705-019-0218-z