Acceptance of energy transitions and policies: Public conceptualisations of energy as a need and basic right in the United Kingdom

Demski, Christina; Thomas, Gareth; Becker, Sarah; Evensen, Darrick; Pidgeon, Nick

doi:10.1016/j.erss.2018.09.018

Cited by 36 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…The willingness to make oneself vulnerable to the trustee thus depends on the belief that the trustee is both motivated and able to act in line with the interests of oneself. In the case of energy provision and transition the public could be considered vulnerable not by their own choosing, but by their dependency on energy for providing everyday services and through this on energy companies and government (Demski et al, 2019). Therefore, it is important to explore how the public perceive these actors and why they trust or do not trust them.…”

Section: Responsibility and Trustmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Of profits, transparency, and responsibility: Public views on financing energy system change in Great Britain

Becker

Demski

Evensen

et al. 2019

Energy Research & Social Science

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Energy transitions in Great Britain (GB) require public engagement and acceptance, but it is not clear how energy system change is to be financed. In this paper we explore public views on responsibility (of the government in Great Britain, energy companies and residents) to pay for costs associated with energy system change and personal acceptance to contribute financially. Five focus groups with 6-9 participants each, were conducted in four locations across GB. Using thematic analysis to examine responsibility and the role of trust we identified three themes relating to 1) views on profits, 2) lack of transparency and 3) the perceived problematic relationship between energy companies and government. Participants assigned greater responsibility to institutional actors and did not believe that these actors were currently contributing sufficiently. Although participants were prepared to accept some additional costs because they were in favour of energy transitions, they also expressed distrust towards the other actors due to concerns over the profit driven energy system, lack of transparency and perceived close connections between the energy industry and government. These concerns could result in reduced public support for transitions if they remain unaddressed; they highlight a demand for a more equal distribution of costs and benefits and fairer processes in the energy system and transitions.

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Section: Responsibility and Trustmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Appendix A. Demographic information for focus group participants (table reproduced from Demski et al, 2019).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Of profits, transparency, and responsibility: Public views on financing energy system change in Great Britain

Becker

Demski

Evensen

et al. 2019

Energy Research & Social Science

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The triumvirate conception of energy justice (TCEJ) has had significant uptake in broader energy justice discourse, being utilised in a growing number of empirical and conceptual works [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] (this is not an exhaustive list, the number of works which now utilise the triumvirate energy justice framework is far larger), as well as being the subject of numerous reviews [13][14][15]. As this paper is concerned with the TCEJ's moral foundations and strategic goals, we focus primarily on conceptual contributions to the approach as opposed to its applications [2,13,14,16,17].…”

Section: The Triumvirate Conception: Foundation and Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Substantiating Energy Justice: Creating a Space to Understand Energy Dilemmas

Wood

Roelich

2020

Sustainability

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This paper explores the relationships between the moral philosophical foundations and strategic goals of two conceptions of energy justice: the “triumvirate conception” and the “principled approach”. We explore the extent to which the goals of these approaches align with their core aims and strategies. Having initially been developed to capture and reflect the values of activist-led environmental justice movements, we find that the triumvirate approach’s adoption of a trivalent conception of justice currently lies in tension with its overarching top-down approach. We note that the principled approach does not face the same tensions as the triumvirate conception of energy justice, but would benefit from illustrating the consequences of framing the same energy dilemma with conflicting moral theories. Aiming to ameliorate these limitations and further develop conceptions of energy justice, we outline a case study of hydro power in Hirakud, India and propose a framework which illustrates how using differing theories of justice to conceptualise the same energy dilemmas can result in substantially different normative framings and guidance. We illustrate how this framework, combined with a pluralistic appeal to moral theory, can enable both approaches to draw on a wider range of moral theory to assess energy dilemmas. This in turn provides a broader socio-political backdrop in which to view energy dilemmas. We outline how this backdrop contributes to the creation of a space in which the grievances of those who suffer in relation to energy systems can be heard and better understood.

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“…This is important because the public is a crucial actor in energy transitions, with various roles that include accepting energy infrastructure, supporting energy policies, adapting energy demands, or adopting energy technologies [32]. The public's energy system expectations influence how likely, acceptable, or desirable alternative energy futures appear [30,31,33].…”

Section: Collectively Held Expectationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Increasing energy costs and societal conflicts are, for example, clearly among the most common concerns among the expectations. However, one characteristic that is controversial and prominent both in academic literature and the political campaigns surrounding ES2050 in Switzerland, but not reflected in public expectations, is energy security [33]. The majority of respondents neither expect reliance on foreign electricity sources to increase in the future, nor power outages to become more widespread.…”

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 99%

How the public imagines the energy future: Exploring and clustering non-experts’ techno-economic expectations towards the future energy system

Braunreiter

Stauffacher

Blumer³

2020

PLoS ONE

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Various countries have pledged to carry out system-wide energy transitions to address climate change. This requires taking strategic decisions with long-term consequences under conditions of considerable uncertainty. For this reason, many actors in the energy sector develop model-based scenarios to guide debates and decision-making about plausible future energy systems. Besides being a decision support instrument for policy-makers, energy scenarios are widely recognized as a way of shaping the expectations of experts and of influencing energy policy more generally. However, relatively little is known about how energy scenarios shape preferences and expectations of the public. We use an explorative research design to assess the publics' expectations of future energy systems through an online survey among Swiss residents (N = 797). We identified four significantly different clusters of people with distinct expectations about the future energy system, each seeing different implications for the acceptability of energy policies and the compatibility with projections of techno-economic energy scenarios. Cluster 1 expects a system-wide energy transition towards renewable energy sources that is similar to the policy-relevant national energy scenario. Cluster 2 also expects an energy transition, but believes it will lead to a range of technical challenges, societal conflicts and controversies with neighboring countries. Cluster 3 is the only cluster not expecting significant changes in the future energy system and thus not anticipating an energy transition. Cluster 4's expectations are between cluster 1 and 2, but it anticipates a huge increase in per capita electricity demand while prices are expected to remain low. The study at hand offers some initial insights into the interdependencies between energy transition pathways outlined in techno-economic energy scenarios and the energy system expectations of the public. These insights are essential for gaining a better understanding of whether and how energy scenarios can contribute to informed public debates about energy futures and how desirable pathways towards them might look like.

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Acceptance of energy transitions and policies: Public conceptualisations of energy as a need and basic right in the United Kingdom

Cited by 36 publications

References 38 publications

Of profits, transparency, and responsibility: Public views on financing energy system change in Great Britain

Of profits, transparency, and responsibility: Public views on financing energy system change in Great Britain

Substantiating Energy Justice: Creating a Space to Understand Energy Dilemmas

How the public imagines the energy future: Exploring and clustering non-experts’ techno-economic expectations towards the future energy system

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