Browsing by Author "Wittmayer, Julia M."
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- Beyond instrumentalism: Broadening the understanding of social innovation in socio-technical energy systemsPublication . Wittmayer, Julia M.; de Geus, Tessa; Pel, Bonno; Avelino, Flor; Hielscher, Sabine; Hoppe, Thomas; Mühlemeier, Susan; Stasik, Agata; Oxenaar, Sem; Rogge, Karoline S.; Visser, Vivian; Marín-González, Esther; Ooms, Merel; Buitelaar, Saskia; Foulds, Chris; Petrick, Kristian; Klarwein, Salvador; Krupnik, Seweryn; de Vries, Gerdien; Wagner, Aleksandra; Härtwig, AnjaSocial innovation is an important dimension of current transformations in energy systems. It can refer to alternative business models, novel policy instruments, financing schemes, participatory governance approaches to energy questions, or new discourses. Its significance for energy systems is often considered in narrow instrumentalist terms, reducing it to a tool serving particular policy objectives. Grounding the concept in social science and humanities insights, this review essay proposes a broadened social innovation understanding. We propose 1) to open up the normative complexity of the concept; 2) to appreciate the multi-actor nature of social innovation; 3) to understand it as an analytical entry point for socio-material intertwinement; and, 4) to understand social innovation as premised on experimentalism-based intervention logics. The proposed social innovation understandings provide a broader imagination and strategizing of structural changes in energy systems.
- Collective Renewable Energy Prosumers and the Promises of the Energy Union: Taking StockPublication . Horstink, Lanka; Wittmayer, Julia M.; Ng, Kiat; Luz, Guilherme Pontes; Marín-González, Esther; Gährs, Swantje; Campos, Inês; Holstenkamp, Lars; Oxenaar, Sem; Brown, DonalA key strategy in the European Union’s ambition to establish an ‘Energy Union’ that is not just clean, but also fair, consists of empowering citizens to actively interact with the energy market as self-consumers or prosumers. Although renewable energy sources (RES) prosumerism has been growing for at least a decade, two new EU directives are intended to legitimise and facilitate its expansion. However, little is known about the full range of prosumers against which to measure policy e ectiveness. We carried out a documentary study and an online survey in nine EU countries to shed light on the demographics, use of technology, organisation, financing, and motivation as well as perceived hindering and facilitating factors for collective prosumers. We identified several internal and external obstacles to the successful mainstreaming of RES prosumerism, among them a mismatch of policies with the needs of di erent RES prosumer types, potential organisational weaknesses as well as slow progress in essential reforms such as decentralising energy infrastructures. Our baseline results o er recommendations for the transposition of EU directives into national legislations and suggest avenues for future research in the fields of social, governance, policy, technology, and business models.
- Collective Renewable Energy Prosumers and the Promises of the Energy Union: Taking StockPublication . Horstink, Lanka; Wittmayer, Julia M.; Ng, Kiat; Luz, Guilherme Pontes; Marín-González, Esther; Gährs, Swantje; Campos, Ines; Holstenkamp, Lars; Oxenaar, Sem; Brown, DonalA key strategy in the European Union’s ambition to establish an ‘Energy Union’ that is not just clean, but also fair, consists of empowering citizens to actively interact with the energy market as self-consumers or prosumers. Although renewable energy sources (RES) prosumerism has been growing for at least a decade, two new EU directives are intended to legitimise and facilitate its expansion. However, little is known about the full range of prosumers against which to measure policy effectiveness. We carried out a documentary study and an online survey in nine EU countries to shed light on the demographics, use of technology, organisation, financing, and motivation as well as perceived hindering and facilitating factors for collective prosumers. We identified several internal and external obstacles to the successful mainstreaming of RES prosumerism, among them a mismatch of policies with the needs of different RES prosumer types, potential organisational weaknesses as well as slow progress in essential reforms such as decentralising energy infrastructures. Our baseline results offer recommendations for the transposition of EU directives into national legislations and suggest avenues for future research in the fields of social, governance, policy, technology, and business models.
- Contributing to sustainable and just energy systems? The mainstreaming of renewable energy prosumerism within and across institutional logicsPublication . Wittmayer, Julia M.; Avelino, Flor; Pel, Bonno; Campos, InesRenewable energy (RE) prosumerism comes with promises and expectations of contributing to sustainable and just energy systems. In its current process of becoming mainstream, numerous challenges and doubts have arisen whether it will live up to these. Building on insights from sustainability transitions research and institutional theory, this article unpacks the mainstreaming by considering the range of institutional arrangements and logics through which these contributions might be secured. Taking a Multi-actor Perspective, it analyses the differences, combinations, and tensions between institutional logics, associated actor roles and power relations. Firstly, it unpacks how mainstreaming occurs through mechanisms of bureaucratisation and standardisation (state logic), marketisation and commodification (market logic), as well as socialisation and communalisation (community logic). Secondly, it highlights the concomitant hybridisation of institutional logics and actor roles. Such hybrid institutional arrangements try to reconcile not only the more known trade-offs and tensions between for-profit/non-profit logics (regarding the distribution of benefits for energy activities and resources), but also between formal/informal logics (gaining recognition) and public/private logics (delineating access). This institutional concreteness moves the scholarly discussion and policy debate beyond idealistic discussions of ethical principles and abstract discussions about power: Simplistic framings of ‘prosumerism vs incumbents’ are dropped in favour of a critical discussion of hybrid institutional arrangements and their capacity to safeguard particular transformative ideals and normative commitments.
- Learnings from Local Collaborative Transformations: Setting a Basis for a Sustainability FrameworkPublication . Macedo, Pedro; Huertas, Ana; Bottone, Cristiano; del Río, Juan; Hillary, Nicola; Brazzini, Tommaso; Wittmayer, Julia M.; Penha-Lopes, GilThe complexity of the sustainability challenge demands for collaboration between different actors, be they governments, businesses, or grassroots movements, at all levels. Nevertheless, and according to previous research, many tensions and obstacles to partnership still exist and results are far from meaningful. By investigating potential synergies, our purpose is to define a sustainability framework to promote better collaboration between community-based initiatives and local governments, in the context of transformation. Specifically, the research aim presented in this paper is to harvest learnings from existing collaborative experiments at the municipal level. As a starting point and using exploratory literature review concerning areas like policy (e.g., public administration) or business and management research, we propose a ‘Compass for Collaborative Transformation’. This heuristic device can support the study of these sustainability experiments. We also introduce a method to map the governance imprint of these collaborations and to provide a ‘proxy’ of transformative efforts. We then present and discuss results from 71 surveyed cases happening in 16 countries in America and Europe, comparing distinctive frameworks involved. Finally, we consider the preconditions of a framework to improve these local collaborations—namely the capacity to support joint navigation through transformative efforts, facing high levels of uncertainty and complexity—and present ongoing efforts to codesign a new sustainability framework.
- Thinking, doing, organising: Prefiguring just and sustainable energy systems via collective prosumer ecosystems in EuropePublication . Wittmayer, Julia M.; Campos, Ines; Avelino, Flor; Brown, Donal; Doračić, Borna; Fraaije, Maria; Gährs, Swantje; Hinsch, Arthur; Assalini, Silvia; Becker, Timon; Marín-González, Esther; Holstenkamp, Lars; Bedoić, Robert; Duić, Neven; Oxenaar, Sem; Pukšec, TomislavThis article positions collective renewable energy prosumerism as a social movement that engages in energy system transformation. Collective renewable energy prosumer initiatives engage in ‘prefigurative’ work through their discursive framings (ways of thinking), their activities (ways of doing) and their understanding and enactment of social relations (ways of organising). The core of this article is a comparative analysis of the prefigurative work of 13 collective prosumers from 7 European countries (Belgium, Croatia, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, United Kingdom). The article discusses their contributions to energy system transformation, including renewable energy production, different mechanisms for involving citizens, local value creation, and the degree of desired and actual collaboration and networking within broader prosumer ecosystems. We then discuss these contributions against societal discourses and expectations towards prosumerism, such as energy democracy, energy justice, and environmental sustainability and decarbonisation. This reveals three tensions: 1) a focus on decarbonisation but not on broader environmental problems, 2) the involvement of certain people and not of others, and 3) the building of prosumer eco-systems while ignoring incumbency. Future research avenues are formulated to conclude the article