ABSTRACT
While climate and energy policies try to mobilize citizens into improving their heating systems and energy consumption, many people have already far exceeded the expectations. Some develop new-to-the-world innovations in small-scale renewable energy systems in their free time. Others aid their peers by adopting and adapting new technology. Many participate in physical and digital energy communities that have come to have capacity to shape new technology and society widely. The introduction chapter to Citizen Activities in Energy Transition discusses how the citizen contributions to energy transition, and sociotechnical change more widely, are often overlooked because of their invisibility to researchers and policy makers. It elaborates on three generations of research on citizens, users and consumers in sociotechnical change that have shifted the perception of citizens from improbable agents of technological change to recognized ones. In the first generation of research users were seen to have importance in early-stage innovation and shaping of technology, often paired with civil-society activism and local communities; the second generation recognized the commonness of active shaping of technology-in-use and cyclical development of technology between design and use; while the third generation of research has focused on how user contributions have become boosted through new digital connectivity and peer communities. In light of this broader research landscape energy-related citizen activities have been addressed predominantly with the two first generations assumption sets. The rapidly changing citizen engagements in energy innovation, technology adoption, intermediation, market creation, and legitimacy building for low-carbon solutions, however, call for an update research on citizen contributions in energy transitions. To this aim the introduction critically bridges research in innovation studies, sustainability transitions and science & technology studies and builds a new approach for the study of user contributions to innovation and sociotechnical change premised on the biographies of artifacts and practices approach to studying sociotechnical change.
