Abstract
The enhancement and the understanding of the societal dynamics in the energy systems within transition entails the inclusion of innovative policy and research strategies. This inclusion raises several questions that change profoundly the nature of the research and innovation endeavour, questions that have not been sufficiently explored in the literature. These questions are, among others, the complexities an scope of socio-technical integration or the emergence of new roles and patterns such as user-inspired innovations or community innovations. Based on the assumptions of the responsible-based approaches advocating to energy system actors to collaborate sharing responsibility and the benefits that perspectives integration brings in the development of proactive and archivable energy and climate policies, this study analyses a group of researchers within the field of thermal energy storage (TES) for renewable energy applications, for the purpose of evaluating their perception regarding to the inclusion of alternative policy proposals and collaborative research strategies. The proposed methodology was based on the use of the common theoretical backgrounds of socio-technical transition for the construction of an responsibility-based approach and the proposal of a survey tool for gathering the empirical evidence from researchers opinions. The survey data was collected from a representative group of researchers (33 countries, 215 targeted researches completing the surveys at 31% with a final N = 72). Findings shows willingness to include citizens as beneficiaries but not as participants of research decisions, the prevalence of the use of social sciences to increase the acceptance of technology and remarkable unawareness regarding collaborative research strategies. This paper brings an important contribution for the selected researchers that can be extrapolate to other energy communities since illuminates the possibility of adapting and asses TES to include new patterns and new governance strategies based in RRI.
Highlights
Introduction and scopeModern economic growth generated by a collection of sociotechnical systems despite of having led to an important improvement in life expectancy and material welfare, are unsustainable in terms of resource and energy intensity and offers limited response to solve persistent problems of societies such as economic crises and rising inequality [1]
This paper enriches the current literature in three significant di rections
To elucidate the drivers to social approach to scientific research in general and focus on renewable energy study and (TES) applications To elucidate the factors influencing communication process and the drivers of the communication, divulgation, and engagement. - To elucidate the drivers of the extent to which scientific information meets the needs - To elucidate the drivers within the user-inspired innovations, collabo rative research strategies, and coproduction of knowledge - To unpack the drivers of Research and Innovation (RRI) conceptual and key dimensions - To broad the opinion regarding to responsibility, engagement, open access and open science To provide insight into factors in forming opinions and beliefs about RRI and the feasibility of this integration within (TES) applications
Summary
Modern economic growth generated by a collection of sociotechnical systems despite of having led to an important improvement in life expectancy and material welfare, are unsustainable in terms of resource and energy intensity and offers limited response to solve persistent problems of societies such as economic crises and rising inequality [1]. A series of alternative frames deeply linked to contemporary social and environmental challenges have been released Some of these frameworks are, for example, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) [2,3] and Euro pean Commission Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) strategy [4,5,6] which share the call to address social and environmental problems through socio-technical integration, the use of collaborative research strategies and the vision of considering participatory, inclusive, responsible and open roadmaps. This integration raises several questions that will be developed resulting in the options for the survey tool arrangement, which are examined in the last part of this chapter
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