What drives and holds public participation in energy infrastructure developments?

To achieve the international climate and energy goals, a rapid and profound transformation of energy systems is required. This process is a socio-technical transition that affects people all over the world. As such, public involvement is crucial to ensure that society's opinions, needs and concerns are considered to enable a truly just and inclusive transition. In many countries, public involvement in the energy transition is high on the political agenda to increase acceptance for decarbonisation policies and reap the local and regional co-benefits of sustainable transformations. For example, the European Union understand public acceptance as crucial to modernise and connect infrastructure and thus, ensure secure, affordable and clean energy for all. Furthermore, renewable energy technologies offer citizens the opportunity to become involved in local decision-making processes, participate in energy production and transmission projects and even become owners of the infrastructure. At the same time, the transition process can be hampered by opposition to energy infrastructure, as citizens and sometimes even entire social groups fear its negative impacts on wildlife, agriculture, fisheries or landscape, to name just a few. This highlights the urgency to explore the different factors that drive or hinder participation in energy infrastructure development. To do so, we conduct a comprehensive review of literature from academia and practice, globally, to investigate the different socio-psychological, socio-technical and institutional drivers and barriers to participation in energy infrastructure development. Furthermore, we validate the identified drivers and barriers with experts from Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK to provide an overview which of the drivers and barriers are more relevant depending on the country/regional contexts. In this talk, we present multiple motivations for participation in and opposition towards energy infrastructure and discuss similarities and differences across different energy technologies and regions.