Energy policy has been a disputed policy field in Germany for a long time. In the 1970s and
1980s, there were huge citizen protests against nuclear energy. On the one hand, citizens
challenged the rather technocratic form of decision-making for building nuclear power plants
because they felt excluded from these decisions that affected their lives. On the other hand,
they challenged nuclear power per se. They called for a reformulation of national energy supply
by an increased democratic process (Hager 1993). In 1985, an innovative participatory
institution – the so called Bürgergutachten - has been implemented in order to discuss goals
of future energy policy. Against the background of these experiences, several participatory
institutions have been implemented in order to realize the German Energy Transition that has
been resolved in consequence of the Fukushima accident in 2011. From 2011 until now,
several so-called citizen dialogues have been implemented. These were concerned with
different topics like future technologies of energy supply or grid expansion. Despite these
participatory institutions, implementation processes of the German Energy Transition like grid
expansion or wind energy expansion are highly conflictual. Moreover, the overall acceptance
of the German Energy Transition is decreasing. Against this background the paper will
compare former and rather current innovative participatory institutions in order to analyze if
there has been a learning process or rather a drop back in the realization of citizen
participation. Finally, an innovative participatory architecture for the German Energy Transition
will be developed
