Panacea or handicap: participation in energy projects

The German energy transition experienced a bumpy ride in the recent years and falls significantly short of what is required to meet the national climate targets. Indeed, the rate of renewable energy expansion must triple in until 2030 but faces increasing political and public conflicts regarding new wind, solar and grid projects. A bulk of empirical research highlights the positive impact of public participation in supporting energy projects. While there are different levels of participation intensity (from non-participation to complete decision-making power in the hands of the citizens), studies find that direct involvement in local initiatives increases input legitimacy and facilitates decision making processes towards sustainability goals. Further, community driven initiatives are considered to have positive impacts on actor diversity, local economic added value, and community cohesion. In the German energy transition public participation is recognised as an important method to increase local acceptance through involvement in decision making processes in planning procedures. This has led to the normative assumption that participation contributes to better political decision-making processes overall. However, there is still a paucity of quantitative empirical research to establish which form of participation, in which context, leads to what effect. In fact, the current literature is dominated by analyses and comparisons of single case studies often without a systematic approach to quantify the effects of projects. Relevant research questions are: What are the implications of participatory processes for solar power, wind power and electricity grid infrastructure projects? Does participation change the actual projects implemented, and, if so, under what conditions and how? Do participatory processes change the acceptance of the projects, and if so, under what conditions and how? In this paper we present the groundwork for the larger study with a critical review of the literature to develop an evaluation framework for a quantitative analysis of energy projects. Firstly, we map different forms of participation in energy projects. Secondly, we scan the empirical literature to identify energy projects and classify them in the participation map. Thirdly, we analyse the local effects in order to derive the evaluation framework and a typology for energy projects across the spectrum of participation.