The EnergyPROSPECTS Project
About Energy Prospects
Project summary
EnergyPROSPECTS (PROactive Strategies and Policies for Energy Citizenship Transformation) worked with a critical understanding of energy citizenship that was grounded in state-of-the-art Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) insights. Funded under the EU Horizon 2020 programme for three years, EnergyPROSPECTS aimed to develop a broad understanding of energy citizenship as a policy concept, a sociotechnical imaginary, a knowing-of-governance, i.e. a social construction of desirable/normal civic agency in future energy systems.
The project has identified and examined a range of cross-cutting issues in energy citizenship, which contributed to the iterative typology development and criteria for case selection. Drawing on existing databases and a search for new cases, a selection of almost 600 initiatives and mapping and typology refinement exercises were performed to demonstrate the depth/breadth of the energy citizenship concept in theory and practice.
Forty cases were selected for in-depth analysis exploring development, evaluation, intermediaries, institutions, governance, and ICT in energy systems. Using a multi-actor perspective, an empowerment toolkit for practitioners and citizens has been developed, co-creating viable strategies, developing new business and social innovation models, and new forms of organisation to advance energy citizenship.
EnergyPROSPECTS’s primary objectives were to:
- Develop an innovative conceptual framework for the understanding of energy citizenship.
- Identify diversity of types and empirical manifestations of energy citizenship.
- Identify constraining and enabling conditions to active energy citizenship.
- Identify and assess the more and less favourable outcomes and impacts of different forms of energy citizenship.
- Enhance engagement with citizens, practitioners and policy-makers, analyse and design more effective ways of engaging citizens and other stakeholders.
- Translate findings and insights into tools and interventions for citizens and practitioners, new business and service models.
The Empowerment Toolkit
The Empowerment Toolkit is designed to help you better understand and practice the concept of empowerment within an Energy Citizenship initiative (hereafter, ENCI). The toolkit includes several knowledge resources that have been produced by the EnergyPROSPECTS consortium over the last three years (2021-2024).It is customised to support your empowerment journey.
The Empowerment Toolkit has been devised as a practical resource for citizens and practitioners, both those who feel capable and motivated to act in the energy system, though do not yet know how to approach this system, and those who have already embarked upon their journey towards empowerment by participating in this ENCI initiative. The purpose of the toolkit is to provide citizens with a set of resources that may assist them to increase their capacity for control, allowing them to be heard and attain a sense of ownership within the energy system.
...More about the Empowerment Toolkit
Download the Empowerment Toolkit
Why the EnergyPROSPECTS Project and ENCI Toolkit are Important
The Empowerment Toolkit is a great national guide to start initiatives and improve opinions on clean energy.