Energy Research & Social Science最新文献

Renewable energy cooperatives (RECs) play a pivotal role in advancing a new energy paradigm that prioritizes equity and inclusivity. However, there is often ambiguity regarding their potential since their core principle of functioning revolves around serving the mutual interests of their members by providing energy services rather than addressing general- interest missions. Moreover, RECs still operate as businesses that are economically viable and appealing, thereby attracting the influence of financial interests. In this context, balancing the tripartite spectrum of interests, namely capital, mutual, and general, can be complex.

To gain a deeper understanding, we conducted a survey among 5402 members of two RECs, namely Ecopower in Belgium and ènostra in Italy, complemented by 20 semi-structured interviews. Our findings indicate that members have mixed feelings about assuming general- interest missions, such as fighting against energy poverty, which do not always align with those of their boards. We also note significant differences between the two RECs, which can be attributed to the distinct contexts in which they operate and their varying stages of maturity. We conclude by discussing the importance of scaling up and the need to adopt a more collaborative approach between the public and third sector to address the complexities of social issues.

Actors within the European Union are seeking to pursue a just transition in their shift to a low carbon energy system, but their ability to do this often conflicts with relations of power embedded in the geographical distribution of global capitalist production. This paper explores the shift from manufacturing internal combustion engine vehicles to electric vehicles in Europe and highlights how, despite attempts to address justice issues in this transition, it reproduces regional and social inequalities. We seek to explain this by drawing on literature on global production networks and world-systems theory to show how pre-existing inequalities between key actors are often deepened, as high value added processes are retained in the so-called ‘core’ countries while the ‘semi-periphery’ states of Europe are forced to compete against one-another to maintain the economic growth and employment that underpins their legitimacy. Although a just transition implies attention to procedural, distributive, and restorative aspects of justice, this paper shows how difficult it is to address each of these dimensions in practice through the case of the European automotive sector and relations between manufacturers in Germany and Central and Eastern Europe in particular.

Ethiopia is currently investing significantly in large scale- hydropower across its river basins. While serving the national economic agenda, hydropower dams have impacted local communities. This study aims to explore the essence of Ethiopia's hydraulic mission and how it accounts for the national-local trade-offs associated with the building of hydropower dams. It draws on an exploratory case study conducted on the Gibe III hydropower project in southern Ethiopia. Data collection involved key informant interviews, focus-group discussions held among project-impacted communities, and a review of three relevant policy documents. It was found that while the building of hydropower dams in Ethiopia is aimed at the national goal of realizing a Climate Resilient Green Economy, the discourses and practices of the hydraulic mission accompanying the building of hydropower dams reflected shortcomings that contributed to adverse socioeconomic impacts on local communities. The shortcomings concern the policy discourses and practices regarding the handling of local developmental aspirations in hydropower development, feasibility studies on hydropower projects; coordination and transparency among stakeholders involved in hydropower development; and hydropower benefit sharing across spatial scales. Given the prevailing discourse about their contribution in serving the twofold purpose of addressing energy poverty and the challenges of climate change, it is less likely to avoid the building of hydropower dams particularly in the Global South. Hence, the study suggests that exploring the possibility of reconciling the national-local trade-offs is of paramount importance rather than contending the construction of hydropower dams altogether.

The high energy prices in Europe have caused an increase in energy poverty, even in Norway, where electricity has traditionally been affordable due to cheap hydropower. In this paper, we analyse the impact of energy-efficiency policies on low-income households to discover whether they reduce or reinforce existing injustices. To address this, our approach combines energy justice with a theory of care. Little attention has been paid to care within the context of energy, although it has been widely used to understand how and why we carry out everyday practices. The paper is based on a qualitative interview study with low-income households from three Norwegian cities. Participants were asked about their concerns and challenges regarding the housing and energy sectors as well as the potential solutions they imagined. We found that policy that is intended to encourage household investments in energy-efficient solutions is amplifying experiences of social inequality among low-income households. Moreover, the lack of connections between energy-efficiency policies and social-housing policy often results in unaddressed housing injustices. Furthermore, we discovered that caring practices played a dual role when addressing energy-related issues. On the one hand, practicing care was crucial in helping low-income households develop appropriate solutions to their everyday challenges. On the other hand, by resolving their immediate concerns through practicing care, they inadvertently concealed energy injustices from wider society. Based on this, we argue that caring energy efficiency practices should be made visible and acknowledged in energy policy discourses. We see this as crucial to enable a just energy transition.

Energy justice advocates for the equitable and accessible provision of energy services, mainly focusing on marginalized communities. Adopting machine learning in analyzing energy-related data can unintentionally reinforce social inequalities. This perspective highlights the stages in the machine learning process where biases may emerge, from data collection and model development to deployment. Each phase presents distinct challenges and consequences, ultimately influencing the fairness and accuracy of machine learning models. The ramifications of machine learning bias within the energy sector are profound, encompassing issues such as inequalities, the perpetuation of negative feedback loops, privacy concerns regarding, and economic impacts arising from energy burden and energy poverty. Recognizing and rectifying these biases is imperative for leveraging technology to advance society rather than perpetuating existing injustices. Addressing biases at the intersection of energy justice and machine learning requires a comprehensive approach, acknowledging the interconnectedness of social, economic, and technological factors.

Solar power is uniquely effective at mitigating the climate crisis and is becoming the cheapest form of energy globally. However, the proliferation of solar power has been uneven and inequitable. For example, large-scale solar infrastructures are awash with globalized financial capital, often developed through the gendered and racialized alienation of land and livelihoods of local marginalized populations. The imperative to mitigate the climate crisis within this consequential decade sadly supersedes equity considerations, inspiring many solar scholars to scream for solar justice. We posit that solar development is an aporia, a perplexing prefigured yet performed impasse against sustainability and equity that anticipates urgent implementation while requiring patient interrogation. In this synthesis overview, we examine the state of social science research on solar power to illuminate critically constructive scholarly inquiry, foster emancipatory praxis, and generate provocations for future research. The articles in this collection explore the aporias of solar photovoltaic development in the global North and global South from heterogeneous scholarly fields, methodological approaches, theoretical frameworks and case studies.

This paper explores the extent to which the concept of justice, embedded at the core of the European Union's public communications regarding its climate goals, is regarded coherently across governance levels. What do stakeholders across governance levels understand by justice and how is this reflected in their overall perceptions regarding the just transition? We aim to make both a conceptual and an empirically informative contribution by qualitatively exploring how the normative framing at EU level is translated via national contexts at the central level in Member States and then further to local communities via regional and local policy-making mechanisms, in four EU Members States – Finland, France, Germany, and Romania. Our work reveals the deeper impact that the differing interpretations of justice have on the shape policies take and on the allocation of funds, tasks, and responsibilities across governance levels.

The ‘fossil machine’ is the powerful and widespread network that supports fossil fuels and obstructs their phase-out. This article assumes that in order to advance the decarbonisation of fossil-based socio-economic systems it is first necessary to ‘deactivate’ the related fossil machine: to investigate how to do so we propose a new reticular approach. The article adopts this approach to investigate the deactivation of the 2019–2022 fossil machine built around a group of coal plants in Civitavecchia – the long-standing fossil energy city close to Rome, Italy – whose planned conversion to gas was eventually abandoned. The article explains the descriptive and analytical role of the reticular approach to the fossil machine. It then uses it descriptively to present, frame, and discuss the practices of destabilisation and disruption and the agents of transition that carried out these practices to deactivate Civitavecchia's fossil machine. It concludes by reflecting on the potential of the reticular approach.

Solar energy is poised to become a major source of electricity around the world. As deployment rises to terawatts levels, these industries will drive demand for specific materials, natural resources, labor, and lands with solar energy resources reconfiguring socio-ecological relations. Global change from the development of solar power commodity chains includes increased demand for minerals and metals, new places for metallurgy and smelting, shifting workforce flows, occupational safety challenges from extractive industries to semiconductor manufacturing fabs. These new geographies of production could result in increased emissions and effluents from specialty chemical industries, conservation and agricultural land use change, and questions around the safe and responsible disposal at the end-of-life. Drawing on the concept “embodied energy injustice,” this paper identifies critical research areas that need attention in human geography and political ecology along the solar energy commodity chain based on socio-ecological arrangements produced by the global solar energy industries over the past decade.

The emerging shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy engages a broad spectrum of society. Through protests, social media campaigns and civil unrest, different groups seek to impact the speed, direction and distributional effects of this transformation. In this paper, we develop a conceptualisation of how such resistance is socially mobilised. We ask how people come to resort to open resistance in the context of energy regime dynamics. The growing literature on the topic highlights that declining material and social capital are not enough to understand resistance in times of fossil fuels. We suggest in this study that attention to a wider spectrum of emotions is crucial for understanding the political and ethical contestations through which changes in energy provision materialize. We draw upon sociological theory, in particular the notion of interaction rituals, to understand the social and affective process of resistance. The concept of interaction rituals captures the movement from feeling aggrieved to mobilisation of resistance through attention to the sharing and transformation of emotions. We apply our theorisation in two Swedish examples of contemporary resistance – the Forest Rebellion and the Petrol Protest – to illustrate the grievances that underpin these movements, and how interaction rituals mobilise and justify resistance. We end the paper with a discussion and comparison of the two examples, and the implications of our findings for (academic) knowledge about the role of resistance in relation to energy regimes.