ABSTRACT
Engaging citizens and stakeholders in the transition of contemporary energy systems towards renewables is a crucial requirement, as energy transitions are not just a matter of technological innovation but complex processes resulting from the interactions of technological and social components. Engagement may support the transition by fostering the diffusion of new practices and behaviors, by integrating different perspectives, knowledge and experiences thus improving the innovation process itself, by eventually improving the public acceptance and lowering the potential public conflicts and by producing direct and indirect economic impacts. The chapter starts from the clarification of the differences between engagement and acceptance that, even if often considered as synonymous by decision-makers, are deeply diverse concepts, the former pertaining to the realm of active participation, while the second to the realm of passive reception. First, an exploration of the diverse dimensions of social acceptance (sociopolitical, community and market) and its main determinants is provided and a model of engagement process is described with specific attention to the most diffused strategies put in place to strengthen the process itself and to its results that may widely vary from a mere acceptance to a convinced support even to the reinforcement of the conflict and the zero option. Secondly, the focus moves to the institutionalization of the public engagement within the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) framework promoted by the European Commission with the aim of aligning the techno-scientific developments to the needs and the expectations of society and that formally recognizes the relevance of engaging the public in the innovation process. Finally, attention is paid to the direct and indirect that an effective public engagement activity may produce at the different levels of the economic system: at the micro-level of firms’ R&D and market strategies, through strengthening their competitiveness; at the meso-level of local development processes through empowering the role of citizens in shaping and influencing the energy sector thanks to engaging tools such as deliberative polling and energy communities; at the macro-level of the national political economy through the promotion of co-production of services and public-private partnership.
