Report on the decarbonisation impact of energy citizenship at the local level: Deliverable 5.3 Energy Citizens for Inclusive Decarbonization (ENCLUDE)
Creators: name: Fotopoulos, Dimitris
name: Manias, Nikos
name: Kleanthis, Nikos
name: Papantonis, Dimitris
name: Stavrakas, Vassilis
name: Flamos, Alexandros
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024

description: Efforts to address the contemporary climate and energy-related challenges towards a green, inclusive, and fair transition by 2050, require the empowerment and engagement of citizens and other societal actors, as has been duly acknowledged within the recent European Union’s strategic and legislative frameworks. Citizens are anticipated to expand their role as self-consumers and contributors within energy communities, actively shaping alterations in the energy landscape, impacting both demand and supply.

As a result, in recent years the concept of energy citizenship has emerged and gained considerable attention due to its potential to bridge the gap between energy transition policies and social participation, by placing emphasis on the importance of participatory and democratic processes in decision-making and underlining the need for a more inclusive and equitable energy system.In this context, the Horizon 2020 ENCLUDE project aims at operationalizing the concept of energy citizenship and understand the multi-scale relationship between its various forms and decarbonization pathways across diverse contexts, with a view to provide appropriate decision-support through the application of appropriate modeling frameworks.

Building on the work done previously, in this deliverable we expand and employ different modeling frameworks of the ENCLUDE modeling ensemble to extract insights regarding the decarbonization potential of energy citizenship at the local level.More specifically, in past deliverables a comprehensive set of “people-centered” storylines based on identified trends and patterns of energy citizenship was designed, highlighting citizens’ perspective, and bringing them to the forefront of the energy transition: 



“Power to the People” (Active participation in the energy market).

“Band Together” (Collective initiatives and expressions of energy citizenship).

“Habitual Creatures” (Individual behavioral and lifestyle changes).

 “People to the Streets” (Socio-political activities of citizens).


Additionally, a set of three (3) “future-world” narratives was developed, describing future systemic changes of society and economy, providing a context of potential future world evolutions that may be inhabited by citizens, namely:



“A Familiar World”.

“A Unified World”.

“A Fragmented World”.


Set to explore the decarbonization potential of energy citizenship expressions mainly manifested at the local level, in this deliverable, we focus on three (3) of the four (4) outlined “people-centered” storylines, namely the “Power to the People” storyline, the “Band Together” storyline, and the “Habitual Creatures” storyline. Combined with the “future-world” narratives, a scenario space to study case-specific decarbonization pathways, acknowledging the depth of complexity and diversity of the European landscape was created.

In this endeavor, we harnessed the power of existing models comprising the ENCLUDE modeling ensemble, as well as expanded it by developing a new modeling framework (i.e., ANIMO) to study the diffusion of social and grassroot innovations related to energy citizenship, like Collective Energy Initiatives.

Overall, we provide modeling results for the following three (3) cases:



“Power to the People” through empowering prosumerism and citizen investments in small-scale photovoltaic and residential battery energy storage systems.

“Band Together” and further diffusion and growth of Collective Energy Initiatives, like energy community and ecovillage structures.

“Power to the People” and “Habitual Creatures” storylines in Carbon and Coal Intensive Regions: Citizen-led pathways based on energy efficiency investments and lifestyle and behavioral changes towards just and inclusive transitions.
description: The sole responsibility for the content of this publication lies with the authors. It does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the European Union. Neither CINEA nor the European Commission is responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.