• Energy Research

Thanks to renewable energies the decentralized energy system model is becoming more relevant in the production and distribution of energy. The scenario is important in order to achieve a successful energy transition. This paper presents a reflection on the ongoing experience of infrastructuring a sociotechnical system in which local communities can manage renewable energies as a Common Pool Resources. We explore how to create a space for citizens' participation in a continuous process of design for energy management. Objectives of the paper are: i) to clarify how Participatory Design could support the sustainability and the effectiveness of an alternative, ii) to present an experimentation with renewable energy as CPR as an alternative model to the actual vision of the energy system. Preliminary results reported in this paper suggest that a Participatory Design process can be valuable for communities in order to establish new energy management models.

Abstract The ethical and sustainable production and consumption of energy are becoming increasingly important with the ongoing transformation and decentralization of the energy system. For other kinds of goods and commodities ethical consumption have direct implications for, and the participation of, informed citizens. Due to its intangibility, energy lacks the same levels of reflection and intervention by citizens and those aspects are yet to be fully explored in practice. This paper contributes to the understanding of how energy justice might be approached. We reflect on an empirical experience of participatory energy budgeting, a process aimed at determining how to redistribute a share of energy linked to collective virtuous consumption behaviors. We analyze through a qualitative thematic analysis how participants make sense of the participatory energy budgeting process and the emerged dynamics within the local communities and how this process can strive to reconfigure the relationship among civil society, the energy sector and politics, in order to remediate injustices. We highlight how the construction-in-practice of energy justice in a local community might be closely linked to issues such as the form of energy governance that allows for the participation of citizens and the accountability of the process, policies and technological limitations.

This paper discusses infrastructuring as an informal experience of Participatory Design in the context of museums. The authors describe “participation” as an embedded and stable parameter for looking at museums sustainability. Their standpoint is that museums develop and encourage knowledge through participative and interrelated relationships among various actors. Thus, the value of participation intersects the concept of infrastructuring, which implies the ongoing feature, the hybridity of networks and the complexity of the context, and consider together human and non-human. Describing visitors' participation in infrastructuring processes, the authors underline the unprofessional and unplanned stage of design process in order to stimulate new direction on designing museum exhibition and for planning the introduction of interactive technologies in the museum environment.