This paper explores how individual and collective heating systems influence citizen agency and energy justice in the heat transition. Drawing on interviews with stakeholders knowledgeable about or involved in these systems across eight European countries, we examine how different types of heating systems influence energy decision-making capabilities and justice outcomes. Combining the Energy Justice Decision-Making Framework with the Capability Approach, we analyze differences in availability, affordability, due process, good governance, sustainability, equity, and responsibility.
Our findings reveal that collective heating systems, while limiting individual autonomy, offer advantages in efficiency, affordability, and environmental sustainability. Their centralized management and economies of scale may support the integration of local renewable energy sources and can protect vulnerable populations from energy poverty, thus advancing distributive justice. However, realizing these benefits requires transparent governance and citizen-inclusive processes.
In contrast, individual heating systems provide greater autonomy and flexibility, allowing households to tailor solutions to their preferences and financial circumstances. Yet this decentralization can lead to operational inefficiencies and fragmented efforts, which may slow down the pace of the heat transition. Additionally, high upfront costs for sustainable technologies may exacerbate inequalities, particularly for low-income households.
This study identifies justice gaps across both system types and highlights the trade-offs between autonomy and equity. We argue for institutional adaptation and regulatory innovation to enable capability-sensitive, socio-technical arrangements that support inclusive, sustainable heat transitions.

To accelerate the energy transition and achieve the needed large-scale transformation to address climate change, different barriers including lock-ins and path dependencies, incumbent power structures and changing individual and collective norms, values, and behaviors around energy need to be addressed. In the face of these challenges, citizens are beginning to play a bigger role in the transformation of the energy system. For example, they are becoming prosumers (energy consumers who also produce energy) and are increasingly engaging in collective energy actions, including taking part in energy communities. In the latter instance, collective investment and consumption decisions are made together, and norms, understanding and behavior towards energy are shaped collectively. To better understand the roles that individuals and groups can play in confronting the challenges of the energy transition, we make use of and adapt Ostrom’s socio-ecological systems (SES) framework to analyze past examples of collective actions and to delve deeper into the causes and catalysts of collective actions. We show how this framework can be used to analyze collective actions across time and contexts, focusing on connecting individual and group behavior with changing societal norms and the corresponding barriers to change. By applying the adapted SES framework as a lens to analyze historical examples of collective actions that have resulted in a widespread transformation in social norms and structures, we identify similarities and differences between these case studies and the current energy transition. Confronting incumbents and the challenge of changing social norms and behaviors are among the similarities, but the specific tactics used to limit incumbents’ powers and the actions taken to influence the norms and behaviors differ. Lastly, we determine the key actors that influenced social and behavioral change, as one of the main outcomes of the analysis.

This playbook aims to take you step by step to design, implement and reflect on an initiative of your own related to the energy transition.

In line with EU’s 2050 decarbonization agenda, the H2020 Energy Citizens for Inclusive Decarbon-ization (ENCLUDE) project aims to help the EU fulfil its promise of a just and inclusive decarboni-zation, adopting the principles of sharing and co-creating new knowledge and practices that are aimed at maximizing the number as well as the diversity of citizens and societal actors who are willing and able to contribute and take any form of action in the energy transition. Catalyzing chain reactions of decarbonization activities across the European Union will be achieved through the ENCLUDE Academy for Energy Citizen Leadership. We focus on a bottom-up approach of citizen engagement for decarbonization actions by identifying, networking and supporting local community leaders who have the intention to lead energy indicatives. A part of this support includes providing leaders with an overview of past collective actions across different contexts and time periods to help provide a historical context for current efforts towards societal transformation.
To do this, we sort through the vast and diverse literature documenting and analyzing collective actions, cutting across historical, geographical, social, and epistemological boundaries. Connecting these diverse perspectives to create a holistic understanding of the catalyzing and hindering factors of effective collective action for change, we adapt Ostrom’s Socio-Ecological Systems (SES) frame-work to analyze two historical examples of collective actions from the United States – the civil rights movement and the fall of the tobacco industry. We show that this interdisciplinary framework can be used to analyze collective actions across different time periods and contexts, focusing on different resources and subsystems that span from individual’s and in-groups’ actions and norms, to the general macroenvironment represented with various political, economic and social traits. Analyzing collective actions will ultimately provide valuable insight for initiating and sustaining collective ac-tions within the energy transition.
The analysis of the two distinctive collective actions shows the different leadership and organiza-tional style, as well as the importance of changing norms to reach social and societal change. We identify critical factors to understanding how societal transformation occurs outside of the environ-mental context and evaluate which of these factors are also relevant for decarbonization. The report ends with the practical application of this document to the upcoming ENCLUDE Academy, while the appendix contains further analysis of dozens of other collective actions.