A systematic review of social innovation and community energy transitions

Abstract

For the energy transition, Social Innovation (SI) has been defined as innovations that contribute to the low carbon energy transition, civic empowerment, and social goals through initiatives such as new forms of governance, social configurations, supportive policies and regulations, and new business models. This work systematically reviews the literature to identify (potential) impacts of SI and bottom-up initiatives on sustainable energy transitions. Based on bibliometric and qualitative content analysis, works were classified by the type of SI, related renewable energy source, and geographical context. Associated sociotechnical changes, obstacles, and enabling factors of SI are also indicated. Main findings show that SI has an important role in local transitions but limited power to challenge the regime and scale-up. For just energy transitions, it can facilitate energy access, coproduction, energy democracy, and participatory processes besides bringing regional socio-economic development and building community capacity. SI can contribute to renewable energy deployment through co ownership and community finance. Also, community-led actions are in a unique position to access local tacit knowledge, influence individual behavior, and use them to build more sustainable cities. Finally, research limitations and directions towards future research are presented.