Energy Democracies and Publics in the Making: A Relational Agenda for Research and Practice

Abstract

Mainstream approaches to energy democracy and public engagement with energy transitions tend to adopt specific, pre-given meanings of both "democracy" and "publics." Different approaches impose prescriptive assumptions about the model of participation, the identity of public participants, and what it means to participate well. The rigidity of many existing approaches to energy participation is increasingly being challenged by the ever-multiplying diversity of ways in which citizens participate in energy systems, as consumers in energy markets, protesters against new infrastructures and technologies, as initiators of community energy projects, and as subjects of behavior change interventions, amongst others. This paper is concerned with growing areas of scholarship which seek to understand and explore these emerging energy publics and forms of energy democracy from a relational perspective. Such work, grounded in constructivist and relational ontologies, views forms of participatory democracy and publics as being co-produced, constructed, and emergent through the performance of collective practices. It pays closer attention to power relations, politics, materiality, exclusions, and effects in both understanding and intervening in the making of energy democracy. This in turn shifts the focus from studying discrete unitary forms of "energy democracy" to one of understanding interrelations between multiple diverse energy democracies in wider systems. In this paper, we chart these developments and explore the significant challenges and potential contributions of relational approaches to furthering the theories, methods, and practices of energy democracy and energy public engagement. The paper draws on an expert workshop, and an accompanying review, which brought together leading proponents of contending relational approaches to energy participation in direct conversation for the first time. We use this as a basis to explore tensions between these approaches and set out a relational agenda for energy democracy research in terms of: developing concepts and theories; methodological and empirical challenges; and implications for practices of governance and democratic engagement with energy transitions.

Mutually-Beneficial Renewable Energy Systems

“…To achieve broad benefit, integrated ecological-energy systems at larger scales imply that both publicly-and privately-owned areas deserve assessment for compatibility, recognizing for example that areas most in need of restoration are often under private control (Stoms, Dashiell, and Davis 2013). Understanding and assessing benefits requires responsive governance (Chilvers and Pallett 2018) including ongoing monitoring of actual effects and publicly-available data on beneficial practices (Lintott et al 2016;RSPB 2016;Moore-O'Leary et al 2017). Various policies hold promise, including standards, certifications, limited licensing terms, community benefit agreements, and funds for ecosystem enhancements (Science for Environment Policy 2015; Gasparatos et al 2017).…”

“…This understanding broadens ethical concerns and urges renewable energy practices that anticipate and take responsibility for these human-Relations -6.1 -June 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/Relations/ nature interrelationships (de la Bellacasa 2011;Donovan 2014;Chilvers and Pallett 2018). The physical qualities of renewable energy, including their proximity and visibility, also make it less likely for people to avoid responsibilities of human energy use (Pasqualetti 2000).…”

“…From the perspective of nonhuman members of the biotic communities, there may be little distinction made between these technological artifacts and other physical features of ecosystems (Jørgensen 2014). This relational approach views human technologies for converting and making use of renewable flows of energy as embedded within and co-produced through their engagement with the nonhuman world, meaning that these energy systems emerge through collective practices of inter-related human and nonhuman participants within broader social, political, ecological, and technical assemblages (Chilvers and Pallett 2018). Nonhuman actors, namely diverse species and ecosystems are at least as critical to the resulting technological system as human agents in government, business, research, finance, local communities and so on (Fatimah and Arora 2016).…”

Democratizing Energy, Energizing Democracy: Central Dimensions Surfacing in the Debate

“…Advancements in politicizing and understanding community's roles in the energy debate show that framing responses to energy challenges as a co-evolution of human and more-than-human systems allow for much more rapid transition than top-down cumbersome structures (Islar and Busch, 2016). Opening up of a whole new research field with a clear focus on relationalities and making energy as a public interest is an important step toward that direction (Chilvers and Pallett, 2018). Such initiatives have helped overcome two main hurdles: initially to convince people that climate change is real and important and second to move from acceptance to action while strengthening the idea that community-led action can indeed lead the way.…”

Putting community to use in environmental policy making: Emerging trends in Scotland and the UK

“…This containment of community, rhetorically and territorially, within a 'community of place' also produces it as a viable, preferable form of public (cf. Chilvers & Pallett, 2018).…”