The Energy Transition: Political and Social Science Perspectives

Social science perspectives as a building block of the heating transition 🔎

The Berlin conference “Heating Transition – Political and Social Science Perspectives” brought together current research on the transformation of the heating sector and addressed key issues in social science energy research. It was jointly organized by the Öko-Institut, RIFS Forschungsinstitut für Nachhaltigkeit | am GFZ in cooperation with the German Political Science Association (DVPW), as well as DIW Berlin – German Institute for Economic Research, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fuer Sozialforschung (WZB), Fraunhofer ISI as part of BEWEGT | Die Energiewende-Gesellschaft and the Institut für ökologische Wirtschaftsforschung (IÖW).

The panels covered a broad spectrum – from governance and planning issues in municipal heat supply and new forms of cooperation between municipalities and utilities, to social participation and behavioral and acceptance dynamics in everyday life during the heat transition.

During the symposium, it was discussed that the impact of technical options also depends on how they are institutionally embedded, locally organized, and used in practice. From this perspective, it becomes clear that transformation paths in the heat transition do not emerge solely from individual technologies, but from their interaction with municipal structures, stakeholder constellations, and usage practices.

IREES GmbH was represented by our colleague Antonia Kranz, who presented insights from our EU LIFE project ESCALATE. The focus was on heat cooperatives as possible organizational carriers of local heat supply.🏘️♻️

Overall, the conference showed how central governance-related and social perspectives are for sustainable heat planning and how they can complement technical approaches.

We would like to express our sincere thanks to BEWEGT and the participating institutions for the informative exchange of expertise.

IREES – RESEARCH FOR FUTURE 🌍🍃