Social innovation supports inclusive and accelerated energy transitions with appropriate governance

The paper addresses how social innovation can drive sustainable and just energy transitions needed to meet net-zero targets. It frames social innovation as changes in social relations and practices (doing, thinking, organizing) that can enable new technologies, services, and practices across energy systems. The study situates the inquiry within the need to understand enabling policies, institutional adaptations, governance structures, financing, and legal regimes supporting both top-down and bottom-up change. It highlights the broad scope of social innovations in energy (e.g., energy storage patterns, citizen assemblies, cooperative ownership, crowdsourcing) and their potential to mobilize creativity and entrepreneurship to address intertwined societal, economic, environmental, and governance challenges. The SONNET project’s unique contribution is its comprehensive mapping of SIE diversity from a multi-actor perspective and its meso-level focus on SIE fields, enabling analysis of interactions between social innovations and structural conditions and deriving system-level policy implications.

The paper situates its work within growing research on social innovation for energy transitions, referencing evidence that social innovations can yield cross-sectoral benefits and multi-level impacts (e.g., Ravazzoli et al.; Lupi et al.). It cites reviews and frameworks on SIE typologies and transformative social innovation, and discusses European Commission perspectives on SIE’s capacity to satisfy societal needs while empowering vulnerable groups and cultivating trust and solidarity. The paper contrasts SONNET’s broad multi-actor and meso-level approach with EU projects often focused on specific phenomena (e.g., prosumerism, energy communities), arguing this breadth enables generalizable lessons and policy relevance, particularly given current EU policies are not yet ‘fit for social innovation’.

The study synthesizes three years of mixed-methods research from the SONNET project (Horizon 2020), covering eight European countries (Germany, UK, France, Poland, Switzerland, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium). Methods included: (1) six transdisciplinary city labs in Mannheim (DE), Antwerp (BE), Bristol (UK), Grenoble (FR), Warsaw (PL), and Basel (CH) to experiment with SIE in urban contexts; (2) 18 in-depth SIE field case studies across six countries using 171 original interviews, analysis of 298 documents, and participant observation at 37 events; (3) mapping of 500 SIE initiatives to systematize diversity; (4) expert surveys evaluating aims and contributions of 36 SIE initiatives across Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, UK, France, Poland, and Switzerland (N=96 experts); (5) three demographically representative citizen surveys in France, Germany, and Poland on four types of SIE with more than 6000 completed responses; and (6) policy network analysis via structured interviews (≥10 per city) and an online survey to understand governance and network structures. The analysis employed thematic analysis (pattern recognition through careful reading and re-reading) to integrate qualitative and quantitative data across multiple levels (initiative, field, city) and methods, leveraging complementary strengths to mitigate each method’s limitations. Country selection reflected diversity in carbon intensity, market liberalization, policy attention to SIE, history/culture, and technological innovation context.

• Diversity as social practices and relations: SIE encompasses heterogeneous practices of doing (e.g., prosuming, storage, peer-to-peer exchange), organizing (e.g., deliberative governance, networking, finance mechanisms, incubation), and thinking (e.g., new framings, values, perceptions). These practices are coupled with distinct social relations: cooperation, exchange, competition, and conflict. Analysis of 500 initiatives confirmed the salience of these categories, with exemplars across Europe. Recognizing this diversity can broaden policy discussions and reveal how even conflict-oriented initiatives can influence transitions.
• Governance, policy networks, and national context: Translocal networks enable SIE by disseminating narratives and legitimizing concepts, with discursive shifts from technocracy to participation, centralization to decentralization, silos to cross-departmental organizing, and climate change to climate emergency. Network composition varies by city: civil society dominance in Mannheim and Warsaw; stronger state roles in Basel; strong market actor roles in Bristol and Grenoble. Cities use market-, network-, and hierarchy-based governance tools (e.g., financing schemes, knowledge hubs, citizen panels, procurement favoring community energy). National contexts strongly shape SIE: state dominance in Poland, centralized ‘nucleocracy’ in France, decentralization and cooperatives in Switzerland, supportive subsidies in the Netherlands, community ownership and remunicipalization in Germany, and liberalized experimentation in the UK.
• Power dynamics and transformative change: SIE involves power to (capacity to act), power over (domination/structural influence), and power with (collective empowerment). Case examples include: Talk Fracking (UK) exercising power to via litigation and crowdfunding; national policymakers exerting power over Stadslab2050 (Belgium) by reabsorbing it into city control; Silesian Climate Movement (Poland) illustrating power with through open, inclusive organizing. SIE can also create new structures that exercise power over others.
• Social acceptance and legitimacy: Representative surveys (N=6141 across FR/DE/PL) show 79–90% would invest in decentralized renewable energy community projects presented in the experiments; 20–29% were already planning to invest in green/sustainable crowdfunding or assets; and up to 80% would join an energy cooperative given supportive conditions. Financial attributes matter (e.g., risk coverage, low minimum investments). Younger (<35) and higher-income respondents are more likely to invest, indicating untapped potential and inclusion needs. City actors can legitimize SIE via financing, reducing administrative barriers, and creating sandboxes. Competitive SIE initiatives tend to contribute more to financial outcomes (e.g., lower consumer bills), supporting broader acceptance.

The study demonstrates that social innovations—configured through diverse practices and social relations—can be central drivers in accelerating sustainable and just energy transitions. By elucidating how governance arrangements, policy networks, and national institutional contexts shape SIE, the findings explain under which conditions SIE emerges, scales, and contributes to transition goals. Recognizing multidimensional power relations clarifies how SIE can shift or transform institutions (through power to/with/over), while strong social acceptance and political legitimacy indicate substantial potential for citizen engagement and investment. The implications are that policy mixes must explicitly support SIE diversity, facilitate translocal networking and discursive shifts, reduce regulatory barriers, provide financial instruments (risk insurance, low investment thresholds), and create inclusive venues and sandboxes. Doing so can enhance SIE’s transformative capacity, expand participation (especially among younger and lower-income groups), and integrate SIE into broader net-zero strategies.

The paper shows that social innovation in energy can accelerate and deepen decarbonization by reconfiguring social practices (doing, organizing, thinking) and relations (cooperation, exchange, competition, conflict), and by shaping governance and power dynamics. SIE’s high social acceptability and potential for citizen investment and participation can catalyze collective action, provided supportive policy mixes are in place. However, SIE outcomes depend strongly on national and regional contexts—political commitment, culture, funding availability, technological access, and market demand. The authors propose future research and policy needs, including: better data and impact evaluation; identifying SIE roles by transition phase and scalability; enhancing inclusiveness and removing participation barriers; developing shared language; exploring evolving power relations (e.g., via Power Labs); addressing energy sufficiency and efficiency; examining SIE roles across transition phases; aligning long-term policies with SIE diversity; and tracing interrelations among SIE types. Advancing these agendas can help embed SIE within transformative, just, and net-zero energy pathways.

• Cross-sectional timing: Many interviews and case studies capture a single time point; changes in perceptions (e.g., after Russia’s war against Ukraine) are not reflected.
• Impact attribution and measurement: The complexity and heterogeneity of SIE hinder comprehensive assessment of impacts on transition pathways; “thinking” impacts are intangible and hard to quantify.
• Self-reports and hypothetical bias: Reliance on interviews, expert and citizen surveys entails stated preferences; city labs observe behavior but in experimental settings.
• Representativeness: Online survey samples are demographically representative by quotas but may not represent all characteristics (e.g., socio-professional categories, prior transition involvement). Exclusions (failed attention checks, speeders) may bias results.
• COVID-19 constraints: Pandemic limited face-to-face engagement, site visits, and in-person workshops, potentially affecting qualitative data depth.
• Generalizability: Findings are based on European contexts and eight countries; transferability to other regions may be limited.
• Data availability: Underlying data are confidential; limits external validation.