Social Sustainability in Models of Energy Transition Pathways: Concepts and Methodological Opportunities

Most explorations and analyses of sustainable energy transition pathways are based on energy systems modelling. ‘Sustainability’ is here addressed by technical-economic solutions that meet climate protection objectives. Yet, increasingly it is called for further dimensions of sustainability to be included in the models and to be used for evaluation and interpretation of energy pathways. Next to resource requirements and life-circle data on new technologies this includes aspects of social sustainability. Our two related research questions are: What concepts of social sustainability can be used for such analyses, and how can these concepts inform social scientific methods that produce relevant insights to accompany energy systems modelling. We discuss a normative-functional concept of sustainability (Renn et al. 2007) and argue for its practical relevance for sustainability-based analyses of energy pathways. On the one hand, social sustainability is often linked to societal acceptance of individual technologies, e.g. wind power (normative dimension). On the other hand, also energy systems models can give insights into relevant facets of social sustainability from a systems perspective. This may include distributive justice in the form of energy prices or locations of energy production technologies and thus distributions of burdens across society (functional dimension). We elaborate both dimensions and then focus on opportunities for social scientific methods to empirically study public perceptions and normativities while taking into account systems perspectives. In a trans-disciplinary manner, we conclude how our approach for a further inclusion of social sustainability in energy transition analyses produces systems and target knowledge that form the basis for transformation knowledge and action.