Social Aspects of Energy Innovations - Public Perceptions of Energy Technologies

Technology never exists outside of its social context, this being especially true for energy technologies which can often have a considerable impact on society. Public perception shapes technological advancement by influencing policy, and even more concretely in the implementation phase in which the public is a crucial actor, being either the home community to a project or the consumer using new energy products. Whether it is a nuclear power plant, a wind farm or a CCS storage site, the success of a project will depend on the acceptance of the local community, just like the introduction of electrical or hydrogen vehicles or energy efficiency solutions in the built environment will succeed solely if perceived favourably by those who are meant to use them.

Public perception and opinion, however, more often than not will differ from those of technical experts or policy makers. People may have a different understanding of the technology and different priorities and concerns. Understanding these perceptions and concerns fosters the crucial synergy between technological progress and society to make the achievement of energy policy targets possible.

Role for ECN Policy Studies
ECN assists technology developers and policy makers with gaining insight in their target group to better understand their knowledge, perceptions and information needs providing a well-founded base for communication strategies and development of tools to facilitate societal acceptance and understanding.

Projects
Some of the projects to which ECN Policy Studies contributed or contributes are:

• CO₂ Understanding
  Lay people’s understanding and perception of carbon dioxide and the implications of this for perceptions and acceptance of CCS.
• CATO-2 (2009-2013)
  This project is the Dutch national CCS programme. The project aims to realize two large scale CCS demonstration plants in the Netherlands by 2015. The consortium includes almost 40 partners, and the work packages that are intended to support the successful deployment of the demonstration plants, covering policy, legislation, technology development, safety and environmental impacts. ECN is coordinating Work Package 5.3, entitled ‘Trends in public opinions’, which aims to assess the general public’s awareness, knowledge and opinion of energy, environment and CCS. ECN has further been appointed as the deputy coordinator of Sub-Programme 5 Public Perception, coordinated by Leiden University.
• NextHyLights
  Planning and preparation of further large-scale demonstration projects for next-generation hydrogen vehicle fleets at additional demo sites across Europe.
• Grid for vehicles - G4V
  Investigating the impacts of a large-scale rollout of electric vehicles on the grid infrastructure in Europe. 
• Changing Behaviour
  Contextualising behavioural change in energy programmes involving intermediaries and policymaking organizations working towards changing behaviour.
• CreateAcceptance
  Cultural influences on Renewable Energy Acceptance and Tools for the development of communication strategies to promotE ACCEPTANCE among key actor groups.

For more information please contact Mia Paukovic.