Exploring anticipated futures: Dutch Grassroot Initiatives anticipating futures in the energy transition

Abstract

In the energy transition process, Grassroot Initiatives (GIs) are increasingly recognized by both researchers and policy makers as new actors. GIs aim to create a sustainable society in both generation and consumption of energy, responding to the local situation, interests and values of the communities involved (Seyfang and Smith, 2017). Looking at this definition, it appears that GIs anticipate certain futures when they initiate and develop their projects. For example, they steadily increase the production of renewables such as solar and wind to make a profit. The aim of this paper is to broadly explore the futures anticipated by GIs. To investigate this topic, we analyse anticipated futures of GIs communicated in the media, using a futures framing approach with athematic categorizations (probable, possible and preferred futures; optimistic and pessimistic futures; and the time horizon) and thematic aspects: environmental, political, economic, social and technical. The results show connections between certain thematic frames and the types of futures. For example, the desired futures anticipated by GIs are dominantly environmental and social futures, while the expected future is mainly economic and technological. The environmental desired future has a long time horizon, while the social desired futures were anticipated in the very near future. Interestingly, politics play a relatively small role as anticipated future of GIs.