Energy Dialogues and Energy Citizenship: Public Engagement in Energy Sustainability Transitions

press release: In the face of global warming, energy sustainability transitions are needed on a large scale. Technologically speaking, this involves shifts away from fossil fuels to renewable, low emission sources of energy. Such sources are increasingly available, in particular solar and wind power. Notwithstanding considerable technological, economic and political challenges in making such transitions, it is also vital that the public is constructively engaged. This paper analyses such engagement through the concept of energy dialogues and energy citizenship.

Energy citizenship goes beyond the role of the energy consumer. The concept represents political ideals related to democratic participation and empowerment. Energy citizenship is produced through public engagement in policy-making and planning, where the potential for action is framed by notions of equitable rights and responsibilities across society for dealing with the consequences of energy consumption, notably climate change (Devine-Wright 2007: 71). This includes participation in energy dialogues, which comprise a wide variety of exchanges about energy issues among professional stakeholders in the energy industry, among policymakers, in research as well as among the public.

Thus, energy citizenship and energy dialogues are mutually constructed or co-produced. The paper focuses on the situation in Norway, drawing on focus group, interview and survey data. It argues that still, energy citizenship is unstable and uncommitted, due to the segmented, abstract and accidental character of energy dialogues. An additional challenge is what the public see as an opaque climate policy, which does not properly address widespread concerns about climate justice.

Biography

Knut H. Sørensen is Professor of Science and Technology Studies at NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) and during 2017 Visiting Researcher at Institute for the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA. He has an M. Sc. in Applied Physics (1976) and a PhD in Organization Studies (1982). He has previously been employed as research scientist, postdoctoral fellow, founding director of NTNU's Centre for technology and society, and Professor of Sociology. Sørensen was visiting scholar at MIT in 1983, visiting professor at University of California, San Diego in 1996 and visiting scholar at Stanford University throughout 2009.