Harnessing social innovation for energy justice: A business model perspective

Abstract

This paper uses a business model framework to discuss how principles of energy justice-in particular, equitable distribution of costs and benefits, affordability, due process and greater participation in decision-making-can be embedded in business model innovations for energy, through social innovation. The paper discusses four cases at different scales (local, subnational, regional and global) to highlight opportunities for introducing principles of energy justice into the core of business models of companies. By doing so, the paper offers a critical perspective on the potential of business model innovation to be guided through a more broadly defined understanding of value enhanced by concepts of energy justice. The discussion of the four case studies-the Carbon Cooperative, Robin Hood Energy, RenEsco, and the Yansa Community Interest Company-highlights the importance of creating supportive wider environments for social and business model innovations, such as the development of skills, knowledge and social capital, through interventions coming from multiple levels and focused on different aspects of energy generation, supply and use (i.e. finance and technical implementation). Going against the grain of current policy, the study implies a shift away from upscaling innovations by taking them to the national scale, and towards creating supportive conditions for more local deals in different geographic locations.

Who Drives the Transition to a Renewable-Energy Economy? Multi-Actor Perspective on Social Innovation

“…Market conditions that create representative demand for renewable energy, including technologies and products-i.e., market attractiveness as a function the size and rate of market growth [66]-depend mainly on sociopolitical and economic contexts, driven by increase in real GDP that allows supporting regulatory costs to promote the deployment of renewable energy [60]. This support framework also requires policies that: promote the dual missions of maximizing business profit while also realizing social justice; create supportive conditions for more local deals in different geographic locations [47]; and spur collective entrepreneurial efforts by innovative stakeholders, especially firms, that would otherwise be unable to exploit their full innovation potential without public intervention [51,52]. Furthermore, it requires awareness and agreement that all members of society should have a responsibility to promote renewable energy for present and future generations and that such investment would stimulate the sustainable economy [99].…”

“…Policies are outcomes of interactions between government and various interest groups or actors within a society and play an important role in providing a collective strategic direction (roadmap) in promoting social change. In this context, policies make contributions to creating and supporting room for niches and experiments (such as development of infrastructure and provision of locations for experimentation-enabled innovation) [3,[45][46][47], increasing the attractiveness of the renewables market [48], attracting the private sector to invest in renewable energy by increasing risk-sharing by the government and changing the concerns and uncertainties of the risk-return relationship in the field [49,50] and promoting the collective entrepreneurial efforts of those innovative stakeholders in a society who are unable to exploit their full innovation potential without public intervention [51,52]. This enhances the shared 'problem frame,' defined as problem-solving activities [6] in social learning-the integration of knowledge, values and interests from multiple actors that enables joint or collective action to address the challenges involved [53,54], such as the depletion of fossil fuels, the risks of nuclear power and climate change and enabling the transition to a low-carbon, sustainable and renewable-energy economy.…”

The Role of SMEs’ Green Business Models in the Transition to a Low-Carbon Economy: Differences in Their Design and Degree of Adoption Stemming from Business Size

“…The few studies that have specifically analyzed the topic of BMs and decarbonization focus on the energy sector [25][26][27][28]. Others, falling under the literature related to Green BMs [29,30] and Sustainable BMs [23,31,32], cover different environmental aspects associated with BMs, but without focusing explicitly on decarbonization.…”

“…First, in the literature on green BMs and sustainable BMs, we include the literature on decarbonization, an important topic which, nevertheless, is not explicit in most of this literature [23,32,39], with a few exceptions in the energy sector [25,40]. Second, we focus on SMEs that, in general, have been understudied, except for some case studies showing selection bias toward environmental proactivity [28,41,42]. Third, we search for differences in the degree of incorporation of decarbonization in SMEs' green BMs depending on their size because both the traditional literature on environmental strategy and that on BMs point to different barriers and enablers for the development of environmental strategies and BMs depending on size [43,44].…”

“…From a strictly empirical point of view, our paper has certain strengths: (1) It is a quantitative exploratory analysis [45], although the literature mostly comprises case studies [7,28]; (2) we work with a database with information on 466 SMEs in 2014 and 695 in 2016, without establishing any bias toward the environmental proactivity that can be found in many previous studies [42,43]; (3) we present a multisector study, in contrast to studies that focus on a single sector [25,46,47]; and (4) we work in a three-year time frame because innovation processes in BMs are long and have many complex effects on business performance [48].…”