Social acceptance, sources of inequality, and autonomy issues toward sustainable energy transition

1. Introduction

The global energy and climate agenda has been progressing fast, going through different stages and co-evolved with scientific advancements (Nikas et al. 2021). In order to reach carbon neutrality, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Shukla et al. 2022), clearly states the importance of a multi-pronged approach based, among others, on: phasing out fossil fuels, using renewable energy sources and improving energy efficiency for both supply and demand (Salvia et al. 2021). Despite the beneficiary impact of the transition to cleaner energy, there are various idiosyncratic effects which should also be treated, not only technical, but of social, economic, and political nature (Marinakis et al. 2020).

Implementation of appropriate energy policies necessitates the understanding of the level of their social acceptance. Technology and social conflicts may have mutual effects, entailing the potential rejection of technologies and projects by the general public. Therefore, it is important to acquire further knowledge on the components of social acceptance to promote policies and projects implementation toward improving community welfare.

To meet sustainability goals, numerous policies have focused on the overall electricity demand. In this direction, the issue of inequality in electricity consumption has attracted growing concerns. In this spirit, investigating the factors affecting electricity consumption is fundamental toward (a) understanding households’ inability to maintain adequate levels of energy and (b) alleviating energy poverty in general (Doukas and Marinakis 2020).

At technical level, the integration of renewable energy will be a crucial feature of energy systems, which entails a deep understanding of energy networks (Taylor et al. 2022). In this context, there is a growing debate concerning the role of decentralized and distributed solutions. It is therefore required to formulate evaluation methods that allow cooperation among the different factors toward promoting local energy transition solutions (Ha and Kumar 2021). Moreover, in addition to the established solutions of the solar and wind industry, the focus can also be directed toward the development of less conventional solutions such as the geothermal energy projects.

The present Special Issue of the Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems 2020 Conference (SDEWES2020) aims to contribute to the debate on the aforementioned subjects, as well as to the analysis of the effective policies toward a well-established transition of the energy sector.

2. Delving into the special issue

The Special Issue opens with a study by Keeley, Komatsubara, and Managi (2022), which assesses the determinants of social acceptance of renewable energy using geographic information data. It focuses on solar PV, wind, and mini-hydroelectric energy in Japan and incorporates spatial information, such as the distance between the power generation facility and the surrounding constructed and natural environment. It also presents maps depicting estimations of social acceptance of the above technologies, based on constructed spatial information datasets and the degree of influence of the components of social acceptance. The analytical framework presented in this study enables the relationship between social acceptance of renewable energy and each unit of spatial data to be elucidated in detail.

Huang (2022) analyzes the distribution status of household electricity consumption for the case of Taiwan over the period 1981–2017. Using repeated cross-sectional data, the concentration indices are calculated to capture the inequality of household electricity use and expenditure. Moreover, this study identifies the main reasons that contribute to the inequality of household electricity use and also investigates how the effects of the dominant contribution factors changed over the examined period.

The management of energy systems with a high share of renewables constitutes a challenge for grid planners and operators. Investigating the energy autonomy of cities in conjunction with the local energy sources can help to overcome this challenge. To this end, Ayala-Chauvin et al. (2022) introduce a framework that allows quantification and comparison of both generation and consumption data and apply it to the city of Loja, Ecuador.

Finally, the study of Sedlar et al. (2022) aims to investigate the technical possibilities, economic feasibility, as well as the institutional aspects of geothermal energy use in district heating systems. The research is based on the simultaneous exploitation of brine from the Ivanić geothermal field and hydrocarbon exploitation from the Ivanić oil field, both located on the territory of the city of Ivanić-Grad in the Pannonian Basin System, Croatia.

3. Conclusions

A lesson emerging from this Special Issue is that the current situation of climate change and resource scarcity encourages communities to rely as much as possible on local resources to increase resilience. Therefore, locating supply should be a priority for policy makers in the coming decades. This means that deployment of distributed energy sources, in different proportions depending on what is available in each area, should be encouraged.

The articles in this Special Issue are delving into these pathways, focusing not only on pure technical and management perspectives, but also on the complementarity with socioeconomic dimensions such as the distribution status of electricity consumption among households and the willingness to pay for renewable energy.

Therefore, toward a sustainable, low carbon and equitable energy system, not only feasibility and technological maturity have a role, but also social issues such as public acceptance and energy inequality should be posed in the core of decision making.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).