The transition towards clean-energy is ongoing, but urgent challenges remain regarding the pace of its development, its direction in terms of social, economic, and, especially, environmental aspects of sustainable development, its interlinkage with other societal developments and its side-effects. This situation of an ‘under way’ transition is no longer an exclusive matter for social and technological innovation ‘front runners’ (e.g. prosumers, energy cooperatives), but rather a developing new reality that everybody will have to deal with, thereby generating new challenges of behavioural, practice and institutional change.

Energy citizenship is a model of active and involved consumer that is not just a consumer, but also a shaper of energy use. EnergyPROSPECTS aims to explore the various ways in which energy citizenship affects the clean-energy transition process across Europe. In analyzing different forms of energy citizenship (e.g. through energy communities, Virtual Power Plants and ICT enabled smart systems, energy poverty initiatives, sustainable consumption and sufficiency projects, energy justice movements, prosumer initiatives, renewable energy cooperatives, etc.) EnergyPROSPECTS will reach beyond the technological and natural-scientific challenges that are at the heart of the clean-energy transition process. The project will examine the potential contribution of different forms of energy citizenship to furthering the goals of the Energy Union and the Green Deal.

The three-year project will produce an interactive online database of over 500 diverse cases of energy citizenship, highlighting those characteristics that most effectively promote active energy citizenship and have the potential to contribute to the clean-energy transition. An important part of the research involves analysing the external and internal contextual conditions as they support or hinder energy citizenship in its various forms. The project will match suitable models and forms of organisation with different countries, regions and contexts. The research team will then conduct a citizen survey to appraise the validity of various scenarios and discuss and refine results in citizen workshops and policy forums. Overall the research will produce practical policy outputs which will be revised with policy actors in knowledge exchange workshops.

Funded by

Project Partners

  1. NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, GALWAY of University Road, Galway (“NUIG”) the Coordinator
  2. UNIVERSITE LIBRE DE BRUXELLES (UB)
  3. GREENDEPENDENT INSTITUTE (GDI)
  4. UNIVERSITEIT MAASTRICHT (UM)
  5. APPLIED RESEARCH AND COMMUNICATIONS FUND (ARC)
  6. NOTRE EUROPE – INSTITUT JACQUES DELORS (JDI)
  7. LATVIJAS UNIVERSITATE (UL)
  8. TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITÄT BERLIN (TUB)
  9. UNIVERSIDADE DA CORUNA (UDC)