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CO2emissions need to be reduced drastically to fight climate change and minimise the further increase of average global temperatures. The decarbonisation of the energy system aims at reducing CO2emissions and is thus urgently needed. This transition is facilitated by inter alia switching to renewable energy sources and more efficient technologies. In the past, the energy transition has mostly focused on supply-side measures. However, at least since the publication of the 6th IPCC assessment report, demand-side measures have gained attention. Thereby, the roles individuals play in achieving this transition is recognised as important. This Special Feature is dedicated to exploring the roles of individuals within the energy transition. The nine thematically featured articles provide insights on this topic using different foci and angles, such as the information to guide individuals' behaviour, the influence of media in framing roles, and technology acceptance. To contextualise and synthesise these diverse contributions, this editorial introduction outlines three different, complementary clusters of roles: technology adoption, lifestyle choices, and political action. By theorising users as participants in transitions through diverse practices, we widen the basis for future research to address and incorporate the roles users play in engaging with and shaping these transitions.

The dominant model of energy infrastructure has historically been conceived in a very centralized fashion, i.e., with hardly any citizen involvement in energy generation. Yet, increasing attention is being paid to the transition process towards a more decentralized configuration. This article examines the factors likely to foster citizen and community participation as regards wind power cooperatives in Denmark, Germany, Belgium and the UK. Using Elinor Ostrom’s Social-Ecological System Framework, the analysis highlights a double-edged phenomenon: prevailing and growing hostility toward cooperatives, on the one hand, and, on the other, strategic reactions to this evolution. What comes out indeed is that, throughout most of these countries, the emergence of some coordinated inter-organizational actions among cooperatives enables them to survive in their critical environment.

Whereas a centralized energy supply system is still dominant today, the energy sector is currently witnessing the development of small-scale and more geographically dispersed generation units, so-called distributed generation technologies. The alignment framework proposes a very useful approach to look at this evolution. Yet, we argue in this paper that this framework does not fully take into account the inertia associated with past technological and institutional choices that may hinder future changes. Relying on the concept of socio-technical lock-in, we illustrate this point with the case of the diffusion of distributed generation technologies. Based on this analysis, we propose an adaptation of the alignment framework in order to integrate these elements.

Recent academic evidence suggests that, in contrast to what is often thought, the introduction of renewable energy infrastructures often leads to negative, not positive, social equity outcomes. Against this background, this paper aims to develop and empirically illustrate an integrative framework for analysing the work – or ‘agency’ – exercised by actors operating within and across different global contexts to align renewable energy and social equity. To this end, the paper first reviews three generative conceptions of agency in the energy transitions literature: institutional work, imaginaries and energy justice. In reviewing their explanatory power as well as their shortcomings, the paper concludes that these different conceptions of agency can be integrated meaningfully in an expanded conceptualisation of institutional work that spans three distinct domains: i) ‘reimagining’, ii) ‘recoding’ and iii) ‘reconfiguring’. This article demonstrates that the three domains can be understood to reiteratively feed into each other in what we call the ‘triple re-cycle’. These iterations produce either bolstering effects that strengthen the potential for positive social equity outcomes or evaporative effects that diminish or undermine this potential. We empirically illustrate the framework in case studies from Germany and South Africa. Overall, we argue that the triple re-cycle, as a heuristic, can provide new insights by conceptually connecting multiple domains of agency in energy transitions, including discursive and material aspects, across different global contexts. Our hope is that identifying potential agency in this way supports work to improve the social equity outcomes of energy transitions globally.

This paper aims to extend the energy justice framework by using the capability approach to understand factors affecting community acceptance of energy technologies. The capability approach is a normative framework for assessing people’s well-being and devising interventions for social justice. Whilst recognising that opposition to energy technologies is fundamentally a problem of distributive, recognition and procedural injustices, the paper operationalises the capability approach to unveil what these justice tenets mean to indigenous people living in three communities neighbouring wind installations located in Southern Mexico. Findings conclude that building a bottom-up approach to understand complex conceptions of energy justice within a community can lead to an improved awareness of justice implications relevant to community acceptance of energy technologies. In the Mexican case, these factors relate to inclusive community engagement that pays particular attention to valued ways of being and doing of the local population, such as equal access to employment, higher education and professional training, diversified sources of income, and recognition of the local indigenous everyday life and communal identity. The results also highlight a nested structure of justice concerns, with the three tenets being embedded into one another and presenting different levels of visibility.

Technological innovations seem to be among the great promises for achieving the urgent modernisation of economies towards carbon-neutrality. Ranging from fusion energy, bio-based fuels, carbon capture and storage to PV panels and so-called smart energy systems, plenty of technologies promise to reduce use or greenhouse gas emissions of carbon based energy sources. This techno-centric view disregards to a great extent that technological change affects and is affected by societal practices and norms.