Energy Publics: mapping public participation in Bristol’s energy transition

The process of transforming energy systems requires greater engagement and involvement of the public. Contemporary public participation tends to take place through opinion polls, protests, maker spaces and smart technology trials, which can make results difficult to quantify. This review used Twitter to search for data on energy participation, limiting search results to the West of England, through key word searches on Twitter handles – organisations with an interest or active role in diverse forms of energy participation. See the research protocol for further details.

The approach captured a range of formal and informal forms of energy participation, particularly those organised by civil society and local government. It was less successful at capturing energy participation where the results were not widely publicised, or where participants were recruited through emails, letters or via print newsletters or noticeboards.

Analysis revealed clear trends:

• To encourage a more sustainable, inclusive and socially just energy system in the region, diverse forms of public participation should be encouraged
• To achieve a more inclusive and socially just energy transition requires responsive and responsible forms of governing energy systems change, giving equal weight to how the public gets involved in the 'doing' of system change, not just what is said in formal participatory exercises
• The process for developing more sustainable, inclusive and democratically accountable energy is likely to be messier, more contested and heated than the development of sustainable energy systems guided by experts
• While multiple discrete participatory events are useful, more effort is needed to link up diverse participation into coherent and larger participatory exercises
• Experimentation to link different forms of citizen participation with different forms and scales of energy decision-making is needed.