Abstract
This paper demonstrates an approach to assess, ex ante, the social acceptance of sustainable heating systems in city districts. More sustainable heating systems are required in city districts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, these systems may lack social acceptance as they often require significant adjustments to homes and may lead to a noticeable loss of in-home thermal comfort. Predicting social acceptance is often difficult due to the long-term planning horizon for energy systems. It is therefore unclear which design requirements and policy guidelines need to be specified ex ante. We suggest an approach to anticipate social acceptance by identifying value conflicts embedded in sustainable heating systems in specific social settings. These value conflicts might cause a lack of social acceptance over time due to value change. We demonstrate this approach using a case of community-driven heating initiative in The Hague, the Netherlands. We identify value conflicts embedded in various sustainable heating systems using an agent-based model. We formulate scenarios of value change to understand the severity of resulting social acceptance issues and discuss suitable heating systems for the city district. The approach can be used to support the decision-making process of policymakers at the local level, even in situations of limited local expertise.
Highlights
The deployment and operation of sustainable heating systems for city districts may lack social acceptance
We suggest an approach to anticipate social acceptance by identifying value conflicts embedded in sustainable heating systems in specific social settings
Our research question is the following: How can we assess ex ante the social acceptance of household sustainable heating systems at the city district level by addressing value conflicts?
Summary
The deployment and operation of sustainable heating systems for city districts may lack social acceptance. Multiple sus tainable heating systems are available to replace current natural gas heating These include hydrogen networks (Klip, 2017), combinations of photovoltaics, batteries, and heat pumps in houses (Litjens et al, 2018), and sustainable district heating (Persson and Werner, 2011). Most sus tainable heating systems may require significant financial efforts from households (Hers et al, 2018) and sacrifices in terms of in-home thermal comfort It is uncertain whether households in city districts will be willing to commit to such investments and purchase heat above the market price. The social acceptance of sustainable heating systems in city districts is difficult to assess ex ante but can be addressed by specifying design requirements and policy guidelines to cope with households’ concerns. There is often a mismatch between the perceived social accep tance during the planning phase and the actual social acceptance during the deployment and operational phases (Hai et al, 2017; Wolsink, 2007a)
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