Constructing practices of engagement with users of Smart Local Energy System: comparing emergent UK case studies of state-led decentralised energy

Energy transitions require engagement with users, local communities and wider publics in order to be fair, acceptable and, ultimately, successful. The development of Smart Local Energy Systems (SLES) is a key component of the UK’s industrial strategy around decarbonisation. As such, SLES projects, characterised by the integration of low carbon generation, demand sources and smart technologies in a geographically-defined location, provide important contexts for public engagement. Drawing on interviews with partner organisations in SLES projects of different size and scale, this research investigates the targets, methods and rationales of engagement from the perspective of SLES projects. Findings indicate that SLES project partners engage a diversity of users and community actors around multiple energy systems facets, using a variety of methods. This diversity is not correlated with project size or scale. Engagement practices are rationalised by project partners through the articulation of imaginaries of users, as well as associated imaginaries of engagement deemed appropriate for these actors. Engagement practices are conditioned by SLES project contexts – namely the technological and infrastructural boundaries, place contexts, and partnerships of actors involved in engagement. Such project constraints are also shaped by the wider programme within which SLES projects take place. Diversities in engagement reveals potential areas of tension between SLES projects and sustainable energy transitions more widely, with important policy implications. First, projects which only engage publics in a narrow sense, e.g. with specific types of users, or around individual technologies risk missing an opportunity to engage people around broader policy objectives relating to local or indeed national energy systems. Second, there is a missed opportunity for systematic social learning between SLES projects about what forms of engagement ‘work’ in different contexts, which can inform future policy initiatives. Finally, there is a need to consider how SLES programmes can be used to enable public engagement in system change beyond the boundaries of individual projects, contributing to broader policy goals around sustainability and environmental improvements.