Exploring industrial community energy systems: A missing link in the industrial energy transition?

The transition to renewable energy sources affects all sectors of society, including the industrial sector. Besides climate policy ambitions and other concerns regarding the social and environmental acceptability of energy provision, the transition to renewables may also improve the availability and affordability of energy services. The latter...

Energy Security of Thermal Energy Communities

This thesis aims to support the design and implementation of energy-secure thermal energy communities (TEC) by investigating their technical, behavioural and institutional settings through a collective action perspective. The thesis shows that energy-secure TEC initiatives are collective energy systems with particular characteristics and...

Just Energy? Designing for Ethical Acceptability in Smart Grids

Smart grids within the transition to sustainable energy systems Smart grid systems are widely considered as crucial in the energy transition, because they allow for greater flexibility in bridging temporal gaps between electricity supply and demand in renewable energy systems. To do so, the systems make use of information and communication...

Understanding the role of values in institutional change: The case of the energy transition

The current transition towards low-carbon energy systems does not only involve changes in technologies but is also shaped by changes in the rules and regulations (i.e., the institutions) that govern energy systems. Institutional change can be influenced by changes in core values - normative principles such as affordability, security of supply...

The role of values in analyzing energy systems: Insights from moral philosophy, institutional economics, and sociology

In efforts to mitigate climate change, energy systems are undergoing a profound transition towards low-carbon systems. This transition does not only involve changes in energy technologies but importantly it is shaped and incentivized by changes in the rules and regulations that govern energy markets. It is a normative transition, focused at...