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Background: Every energy transition has had its winners and its losers, both economically and in terms of social justice and community cohesion. The current transition is no different given the complex, intersecting matrices of power and experience that influence the key stakeholders and actors involved. Local oppositions to the deployment of renewable energy technologies have been significantly higher than expected. In numerous instances, these oppositions have been in reaction to the disempowerment of local rights and entitlements associated with specific developments. Consequently, there is a clear need for governance structures and organisational formats that are participatory, inclusive and mindful of the lived experiences of local people. Despite the knowledge gaps and financial constraints that continue to persist, how can local communities become empowered to drive project development and meaningfully engage in the low-carbon energy transition? Methods: This paper presents a methodology for investigating citizen perceptions of the energy transition and the kinds of roles they see themselves having in its implementation. Working with six communities across five European countries (France, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and the UK), we conducted a series of iterative cross-sectional community engagements using a mixed methods approach. In addition, a number of innovative participatory action research tools were incorporated to engage citizens in co-designing their own energy transition pathways. Results: Participants expressed having restricted agency as citizens participating in the energy system. They also felt locked in to a limiting set of false choices as 'energy consumers' that do not translate into real or meaningful power, despite popular narratives to the contrary. The research also resulted in a co-designed characterisation tool to help local communities assess the energy democracy and citizen participation potential of a number of participatory business models. Conclusions: Citizens remain locked out of ...

A key objective of work package 5 of the ENTRUST project has been to develop a cohesive community research environment utilising participatory action research (PAR) techniques that encourage active participant engagement in the project and the issues informing ENTRUST's intersectional, co-design programme. Establishing the creative spaces whereby stakeholders are able to identify, consider, and then deliberate on, the actions and behaviours that influence their respective participations and positionalities in the energy system and its current transition, has been essential to this approach. In addition, it was important for the research team that this was done by implementing a range of iterative, multi-scalar dialogues with participants within each of the case study communities that, in turn, also informed the team's engagements in each of the other communities when applicable. The previous two deliverables for this work package reported on how the ENTRUST team went about achieving these goals, from the selection of the communities of practice through to the reflexive feedback and analysis of the community dialogue outcomes. An important part of these activities was to ensure that an essential requirement of the project, achieving gender inclusion in the research actions, was possible. Collecting a majority male (or indeed female) perspective was considered anathema to the project's overall goals and therefore not considered an option. D5.1 Report on Community Dialogues demonstrated how the research team went about ensuring that balanced engagement did occur, in terms of gender, and discussed the suite of collaborative methods that were deployed. D5.2 Report on the Expert Feedback on Community Dialogue Outcomes dealt more specifically with an innovative research method adopted for the research communities in this project, a deliberative democracy tool known as the citizen jury, in addition to a modified Delphi-panel with experts – this was further augmented with engagements at the community level – to coproduce ...

This report corresponds to the last deliverable of Work Package (WP) 4, "Policy Analysis", which focuses on depicting current energy policies and regulations in six European countries (France, Spain, UK, Germany, Italy and Ireland). WP4 will use the input from WP2 (energy technologies) and WP3 (socio-economic analysis) to create a best practice policy toolkit for EU Member States. As such, it will serve as a key input for three future WPs: WP6, where it will help to define innovative energy pathways; WP7, where WP4 outputs will be integrated into the energy portal; WP8, where it will help to stimulate the dialogue at the national and EU level. Steering society through a responsible energy transition is an eminently political process. To date, most of the policymaking efforts to obtain a low-carbon energy system and to reduce the environmental impact of energy consumption have focused on energy-efficient technologies and renewable energy resources. In representative democracies of Western countries, these efforts have historically been limited to top-down interventions, such as legislation and regulation. However, policies focused on changing people's behaviours may also have significant impact on the energy consumption of a country. Therefore, new and alternative behavioural approaches are increasingly being developed in a range of policy areas, providing a broader mix of policy options available to policymakers. Three key policy areas featuring a strong focus on behaviour change are energy, environment and transport. The investment cycles in each of these areas tends to be long, meaning strategic decisions taken today have long-term implications for the achievement of climate-orientated energy policy goals. If a sustainable and cost-effective transition towards a low-carbon energy sector is to occur, long-term policy guidance is required. The ENTRUST policy toolkit hopes to help in this regard. What is the ENTRUST policy toolkit? The ENTRUST policy toolkit is designed for policymakers and practitioners whose ...