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Butler, Catherine and Demski, Christina C. 2013. Valuing public engagement with energy system
transitions: the importance of what lies beneath [Commentary]. Carbon Management 4 (6) , pp.
659-662. 10.4155/cmt.13.64 file
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Postprint: Butler, C. and Demski, C. C. (2013). Valuing public engagement with energy
system transitions: the importance of what lies beneath [Commentary]. Carbon
Management, 4(6), 659-662. (10.4155/cmt.13.64).
Valuing Public Engagement with Energy System Transitions: The importance of what
lies beneath
Catherine Butler and Christina Demski
School of Psychology, Cardiff University, 70 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3AT, UK
Author for correspondence:
c.butler@exeter.ac.uk, demkicc@cardiff.ac.uk
Key words: public engagement, energy system transformations, low-carbon transitions
Postprint: Butler, C. and Demski, C. C. (2013). Valuing public engagement with energy
system transitions: the importance of what lies beneath [Commentary]. Carbon
Management, 4(6), 659-662. (10.4155/cmt.13.64).
Postprint: Butler, C. and Demski, C. C. (2013). Valuing public engagement with energy
system transitions: the importance of what lies beneath [Commentary]. Carbon
Management, 4(6), 659-662. (10.4155/cmt.13.64).
Introduction
The importance of public engagement with socio-technical issues has gained increasing
salience in the last decade across academia, policy, and industry [1]. Among the reasons for
public engagement are the opportunities such activities afford for dialogue between
stakeholders and wider publics. Given the right approach, such forms of dialogue can offer a
basis for more robust decision-making, and for anticipating potential points of conflict and
possibilities for resolution. In the contemporary context of climate change and the
imperatives it presents for energy system change, public engagement is likely to be highly
important in efforts to move toward new system forms [2,3,4].
Publics are deeply implicated in energy system configurations (e.g. as consumers and
producers of energy, as citizens with voting powers, as active protesters or proponents of
infrastructures), and will therefore be central to the successful implementation of change
processes. Indeed, several commentators have posed that the development of a new social
contract – the contract of unspoken reciprocal agreements between state and citizenry – will
be key to achieving change of the scale required [5]. In this regard, public engagement is
likely to be significant for a number of reasons; not least in developing understanding of
public concerns and expectations about system change.
In this editorial, we examine existing debates within public engagement research
around energy, opening up insight into some of the key challenges and opportunities. We
conclude drawing from our recent research on public engagement with energy system
transitions, arguing that central to engagement is a focus on public values and the more
general concerns that underlay particular responses.
Postprint: Butler, C. and Demski, C. C. (2013). Valuing public engagement with energy
system transitions: the importance of what lies beneath [Commentary]. Carbon
Management, 4(6), 659-662. (10.4155/cmt.13.64).
Public engagement: debates and developments
In debates around public engagement a shift has been identified from an early focus on
providing knowledge to more participatory and inclusive processes, which place emphasis on
dialogue and mutual learning. The former focuses on activities that inform or correct
perceived deficits of the public (e.g. a knowledge deficit) so that publics can understand
decision-contexts and formulate their views based on rational assessment of the evidence.
This approach has been extensively criticised; 1) for assuming the neutrality of information
and privileging certain forms of knowledge, 2) for discounting the role for values, situational
context, and other types of knowledge, and 3) for framing publics as a problem in terms of
their ignorance, trust or ambivalence, and engaging in order to correct rather, than to reflect
divergent perspectives [6]. More recent approaches to public engagement focus on a two-way
interaction between publics and stakeholders. The notions of knowledge, trust, openness and
transparency become important principles here, rather than problems to correct.
There are multiple and diverse forms of engagement process, ranging from citizen’s
juries and deliberative workshops, to consultations and Delphi techniques. Importantly, it has
been demonstrated that the type of engagement process does not necessarily guarantee an
approach that addresses the problems associated with deficit models [7]. Instead, it is
important to pay attention to the processes of framing that occur within engagement activities.
Stirling highlights a distinction between ‘opening up’ and ‘closing down’ in the framing of
technological choices or social concerns more generally. Where open framings place
emphasis on revealing any open-endedness, contingency and capacity for the exercise of
agency, closed framings entail cutting through the messy, intractable and conflict prone
diversity of perspectives. This latter approach is regarded as problematic because it does not
Postprint: Butler, C. and Demski, C. C. (2013). Valuing public engagement with energy
system transitions: the importance of what lies beneath [Commentary]. Carbon
Management, 4(6), 659-662. (10.4155/cmt.13.64).
offer the thorough and inclusive approach associated with, but not innate to, more open and
dialogic processes.
Public engagement and energy
In the UK’s energy context, it is possible to identify distinct forms of public engagement
activity. First, there are examples of state or industry led public engagement, most commonly
in the form of consultation exercises. Second, there are processes instigated by publics
whereby they engage through avenues such as activism, protest, and public inquiries. Third,
there are forms of academic research that can be broadly regarded as public engagement.
These different forms of engagement intersect in various ways, for example, when academic
research arises around a state led engagement process [8].
Academic research involving public engagement with energy has been wide ranging
with projects addressing nuclear and renewable energy being particularly well developed [9].
There is also a significant body of research dedicated to examining public engagement with
energy consumption across home, work, and transport [10]. Academic research in this area is
typically concerned to characterise and understand public concerns with an analytic lens. As
such studies within this tradition also offer critical reflection on wider state and industry
engagement processes.
Cass and Walker, for example, have pointed to the problematic nature of conceptions
of the public held by those involved in renewable energy development [11]. They show how
engagement processes in practice were often based on deficit principles (i.e. they were
underpinned by an assumption that public opposition was rooted in irrational emotions and
misinformation that required correcting), and how modes of engagement that narrowed the
space for expression of emotion were increasingly favoured by developers (12). Moreover,