How to account for the dark sides of social innovation? Transitions directionality in renewable energy prosumerism
Pel, Bonno; Wittmayer, Julia M.; Avelino, Flor; Loorbach, Derk; de Geus, Tessa
(2023) Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, volume 49
(Article)
Abstract
Social innovation is gaining attention as a pivotal dimension of socio-technical transitions with renewable energy prosumerism as a prominent example. However, this example also highlights that social innovation evokes concerns about purposes, beneficiaries, normative dilemmas and legitimacy. This paper addresses recent calls to confront the perceived ‘dark sides’ of social
... read more
innovations. As debates on these dark sides often get stuck in either naive optimism or paralyzing critique, the paper investigates how transitions theory can inform nuanced understandings. The key concept is transitions directionality. The analysis shows how it conceptualizes the dark sides as manifestations of socio-technical path dependence, as disempowering ideological ‘landscape’ factors, as internal contradictions within institutionally complex regimes, as niche-regime dialectics, and as transition phases. Rather than proposing a particular normative position, the paper presents a heuristic that supports well-considered engagement with the dark sides.
show less
Download/Full Text
Keywords: Transitions, Social innovation, Directionality, Ethics, Prosumerism, Critical theory
ISSN: 2210-4224
Publisher: Elsevier bedrijfsinformatie b.v.
Note: Funding Information: REP also displays many new ways of doing and organizing. It amounts to a broad bundle of such social innovations, initiated by citizens, civil society organizations, businesses, as well as governments: Energy cooperatives, collective self-consumption networks, peer-to-peer energy trading, feed-in tariffs, micro-grids, and regional development funds ( Creamer et al., 2018 ; Huybrechts and Haugh, 2018 ; Bauwens et al., 2019 ; de Bakker et al. 2020 ; Wittmayer et al., 2021 ). Similar to the showcasing of many technology-focused innovations through demonstration projects, REP is prefiguring ( Monticelli, 2021 ) alternative modes of living, working, or governing. Prominent examples are citizen-led installing of solar panels, or cooperatives setting up democratically managed projects in wind, solar, biogas or hydro-power. But the ‘new ways of doing and organizing’ extend beyond grassroots initiatives. Citizen-led action is also supported by broader innovation ecosystems on renewable energy ( Vernay and Sebi, 2020 ), and by public-private governance alliances ( de Bakker et al. 2020 ). It is crucially facilitated and constrained by policy and regulation ( Campos et al., 2020 ): Financial arrangements of feed-in tariffs and ‘green certificates’ for renewable energy production are key examples of this. The REP example shows how ‘new ways of doing and organizing’ often involve innovations in economic-financial arrangements as well. REP involves investments in equipment, returns on investment that have positive external effects in terms of contributions to renewable energy objectives, and changes in (collective) ownership. The rise of energy cooperatives shows the considerable SI that takes place in the form of social entrepreneurship, not-for-profit economic activity, and shifts towards democratized, alternative models for investment in RE. These particular business-oriented ‘new ways of organizing’, crucial for the sustenance of REP initiatives, have been analyzed extensively in research on REP business models ( Huijben et al., 2016 ; Brown et al., 2019 ). Likewise, scholarship on digital transition ( Lavrijssen and Parra, 2017 ; Sovacool et al., 2021 ; Andersen et al., 2021 ) has pointed out how ‘new ways of organizing’ are often intertwined with technological innovations in ICT. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Authors
(Peer reviewed)
