A rural energy collaboratory: co-production in Thailand’s community energy experiments

Abstract

Much has been written about innovations arising from what has been dubbed “living laboratories” (or LivingLabs) for sustainable energy transitions, especially in the global North and, in particular, in their urban contexts. Yet, Southern- and rural-oriented LivingLabs, which also exist, remain less documented and assessed. LivingLab stories and the sociotechnical experiments being co-produced in these spaces in the context of energy transition can offer opportunities for advancing and reflecting upon how the energy transition agenda can be scaled and accelerated in the context of our temporally specific climate mitigation needs. This paper narrows this gap by presenting a case analysis of what can be argued as an in-situ LivingLab for community energy transition in understudied rural Southeast Asia. Using data from ethnographic field study, focus group discussions, and face-to-face interviews, this paper describes the emergence and co-production of a community-based energy transition in a rural Thai community as a LivingLab, examining this innovation and underlining the ways in which this practice has become a collaboratory—a co-produced sociotechnical laboratory that extended public engagement to citizen empowerment.