Energy Citizenship Between Actions, Beliefs and Contexts: Comparison of Five European Countries

Energy citizenship has become a key concept in academic and political discourse to characterise the relationship of individuals to the energy system and its governance (Devine-Wright 2007). It posits that individuals in energy system transformations should be understood not just as passive consumers or nuisance residents but as capable, energy-aware and actively participating citizens. However, the concept has come under increasing scrutiny for attributing too much responsibility to individual citizens and, more broadly, for being based on normative and methodological individualism while neglecting structural factors. Further criticism aimed at the appropriation of the term of energy citizens(hip), diluting its original meaning and reducing it solely to economic participation (Lennon & Dunphy 2020) – thus neglecting the political dimension of citizenship as sharing in self-government (Sandel 2022). This paper acknowledges this criticism and aims at connecting individual and structural factors in the analysis of energy citizenship. Thereby, it conceptualises acts of energy citizenship (Laakso et al. 2023) as encompassing both individual and collective actions (Debourdeau et al. 2024) in economic and political arenas, including changing energy consumption, implementing energy retrofits, renewable energy investments, having energy as relevant topic when voting, participation in social movements and engaging in collective energy initiatives. To explain such acts of energy citizenship in terms of individual and structural factors, this paper applies a cross-country comparison based on individual-level and country-level data. Individual-level data originates from a representative citizen survey in five EU countries (France, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Spain), in which citizens were asked about their different acts of energy citizenship as well as socio-economic backgrounds and general beliefs on the energy transition. Structural country-level data describing the national contexts for energy citizenship stem from a PESTEL analysis (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, Legal factors) of these countries. Ordinal and binary logistic regression analyses are used to examine how variance in the undertaking or omission of different acts of citizenship is linked to individual or structural factors. Early results indicate a strong influence of structural country contexts on the scope for action of energy citizenship. This especially relates to the explanation of non-action, indicating the role of such structural factors as barriers (while their effect as facilitators is less conclusive). Furthermore, the analysis shows that beliefs about the role of individuals in the energy system are associated with strong effects on (non-)action, indicating the great importance of education and empowerment. On the other hand, socio-economic factors provide little explanation for acts of energy citizenship. Overall, the analysis emphasises the responsibility of public actors to create framework conditions that provide space and opportunities for individual and collective agency, including economic and political action.