Report on the decarbonization potential of energy citizenship at the national and the EU levels: Deliverable 5.4 Energy Citizens for Inclusive Decarbonization (ENCLUDE)

Efforts to address the contemporary climate and energy-related challenges towards a green, inclusive, and fair transition by 2050, require the empowerment and engagement of citizens and other societal actors, as has been duly acknowledged within the recent European Union’s strategic and legislative frameworks. Citizens are anticipated to expand their role as self-consumers and contributors within energy communities, actively shaping alterations in the energy landscape, impacting both demand and supply.

As a result, in recent years the concept of “energy citizenship” has emerged and gained considerable attention due to its potential to bridge the gap between energy transition policies and social participation, by placing emphasis on the importance of participatory and democratic processes in decision-making and underlining the need for a more inclusive and equitable energy system.

In this context, the European Commission-funded Horizon 2020 “ENCLUDE” project aims at operationalizing the concept of energy citizenship and understand the multi-scale relationship between its various forms and decarbonization pathways across diverse contexts, with a view to provide appropriate decision-support through the application of appropriate modeling frameworks.

Building on the work done previously, in this deliverable we expand and employ different modeling frameworks of the ENCLUDE modeling ensemble to extract insights regarding the decarbonization potential of energy citizenship at both the national and the supranational levels.

More specifically, in past deliverables a comprehensive set of “people-centered” storylines based on identified patterns and trends of energy citizenship was designed, highlighting citizens’ perspectives and bringing them to the forefront of the energy transition: 

• “Power to the People” (Active participation in the energy market).
• “Band Together” (Collective initiatives and expressions of energy citizenship).
• “Habitual Creatures” (Individual behavioral and lifestyle changes).
• “People to the Streets” (Socio-political activities of citizens). 

Additionally, a set of three (3) “future-world” narratives was developed, describing future systemic changes of society and economy, providing a context of potential future world evolutions that may be inhabited by citizens, namely:

• “A Familiar World”.
• “A Unified World”.
• “A Fragmented World”.

Set to explore the decarbonization potential of energy citizenship expressions mainly manifested at the national and the supranational levels, in this deliverable, we focus on all four (4) “people-centered” storylines. Combined with the “future-world” narratives, a scenario space to study case-specific decarbonization pathways, acknowledging the depth of complexity and diversity of the European landscape was created.

In this endeavor, we harnessed the power of existing models comprising the ENCLUDE modeling ensemble, as well as expanded it by developing a new modeling framework (i.e., OSeMOSYS-GR) to study different energy planning alternatives in Greece by 2050, based on different citizens’ preferences and different levels of acceptance (or opposition).

Overall, we provide modeling results for the following three (3) cases:

• “Power to the People” by empowering prosumerism and citizen adoption of small-scale photovoltaic and residential battery energy storage systems at the Member State level by 2030.
• Combining “Power to the People” with “People to the Streets” storylines towards citizen preference-led energy planning alternatives and 100% renewable-based national energy systems.
• Decarbonizing the transport and the residential sectors in Western Europe under different “people-centered” storylines and manifestations of energy citizenship.