In order to accelerate the energy transition, policies have proven successful to reduce emissions, but more policy innovations are needed to reach carbon neutrality. Despite some understanding of the process of such innovations, the role of knowledge is not addressed in a systematic way. In particular, the role of energy models has not been investigated thoroughly. In this article, we examined the types of knowledge utilization and the ways in which they influence the development of policy innovation. We focused on energy modelling and conducted a case study of the European Union's (EU) 55% climate target for 2030, and analytically distinguish three uses of model outputs (rational, legitimizing and enlightening), for which we nuance who uses what knowledge to what effect. Based on a qualitative content analysis of 33 text documents and 12 semi-structured interviews with EU policy modelers and policymakers, the results indicate that energy models enable and constrain policy innovations. Model outputs were mainly utilized to legitimize the previously formulated 55% target, but also in rational and enlightening ways for the development of a policy mix to achieve this target. However, the absence of assessments of higher targets might have inhibited the adoption of a more ambitious policy. Based on these results we identify enabling and inhibiting factors for the use of energy models in policymaking. Beyond energy modelling, the study develops our understanding of how different uses of knowledge affect policy innovation and lays the foundation for future studies on the uses of different kinds of knowledge.

Energy communities are no longer peripheral experiments in Europe but central actors in the energy transition. Their growth and institutionalization is particularly observable in the Dutch context. By 2024, 702 cooperatives engaged over 139,000 members across nearly 90% of municipalities - evidence that the energy transition is societal as much as technical. In the Dutch context, communities can accelerate and democratise change by raising acceptance of renewable energy projects, mobilising local capital and building energy literacy and trust. The Netherlands is a uniquely fertile testbed for integrating bottom-up change: a polycentric governance setting, a dense cooperative ecosystem, rapid digitalisation and high distributed generation all push communities beyond renewable energy deployment towards new activities, such as storage and demand-side flexibility. Yet, practice still outpaces legal, policy and technical frameworks. Unresolved tensions in regulation, legitimacy, justice, impact evaluation, system integration, and scaling reveal that energy communities remain under-leveraged. This perspective advances a research agenda to close that gap, co-created with Energie Samen, the Dutch federation of energy communities, and informed by targeted literature synthesis, roundtables, and practitioner interviews, to pinpoint where knowledge is most urgently needed to align rules and markets with citizen-led innovation. While our perspective is focused on the Netherlands, the lessons are transposable if contextualized to other legal, market and social conditions. Accordingly, we suggest that without deliberate coordination between research, policy, and practice, the potential of energy communities will be left on the table just when it matters most.

Especially in underprivileged neighbourhoods (UNs), with high renovation urgency and thus opportunities to kick-start the energy transition (ET), residents tend to resist retrofit measures. This is due to general lack of trust in government, housing corporations, and other key players. We contend that a negative spiral of ET effectiveness and justice is rooted in two mismatches, between (i) UN resident needs and everyday practices and customary ET solutions and between (ii) UN residents and the key players running the ET. This may produce a downward spiral of ineffective solutions, declining trust and inequalities. We argue that fundamentally addressing these mismatches may reverse this downward spiral into an upward one, and then present our Just PREPARE approach to that challenge. At the core of this approach are (i) ‘double-eyed’ methods to help articulate residents' needs and practices in their own context, which then inform the design of the technological and governance aspects of solutions and (ii) participatory settings and processes for planning the ET. We elaborate this approach and present some illustrative preliminary experiences from a transdisciplinary research project in which we implemented it in four UNs in the Netherlands. We end with some recommendations for future research.

Onshore wind energy projects are traditionally developed by commercial project developers. However, the development of these projects is increasingly encountering problems due to poor social acceptance and legal objections. In addition to commercial project developers, renewable energy cooperatives (REScoops) also develop onshore wind energy projects. These non-commercial entities are driven by local, ecological and egalitarian values and often strive for local ownership. This influences the rules-in-use they apply when planning and developing projects. In this paper, fourteen cases of onshore wind energy project development in the Netherlands are analysed using Elinor Ostrom's Institutional Analysis and Development framework. The objectives are: (1) to investigate how the rules-in-use differ between fourteen selected onshore REScoop wind energy projects and onshore commercial wind energy projects in the Netherlands, (2) to investigate how the project duration and the number of submitted views and appeals differ between these two types of wind energy projects, and (3) to determine to what extent the observed differences in rules-in-use can explain the differences in project duration and the number of views and appeals submitted. The research design involves a stepwise approach, including qualitative within-case analysis, followed by quantitative cross-case statistical analysis. The results show that projects developed by REScoops differ on six out of seven rules, especially pay-off, position, and aggregation rules. For projects with a higher percentage of REScoop ownership, the total duration of project planning and development is shorter, there are fewer submitted views during the permit application process and fewer appeals to the Council of State.

In response to unprecedented global urbanization, the smart city concept has emerged, leveraging ICT to enhance municipal efficiency and improve the quality of urban life. The concept of smart energy city (SEC) is closely related to smart cities, however, energy system development in a smart city context is often found eluding certain segments of society, which calls for more attention to inclusion in SEC development. In this paper, the research question is: How can inclusion be effectively integrated into a framework of SEC design? A framework is developed comprising three key principles - energy conservation, energy efficiency, and renewable energy. These principles are aligned with collaboration among stakeholders, smart energy solutions applications, and integration of these solutions. The framework is illustrated using two real-world cases of demonstration projects in the City of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The paper concludes by presenting several strategies for fostering inclusion in SEC development. They pertain to including utilization of the framework as a guideline to promote inclusion, establishing a clear understanding of inclusion, and involving all relevant stakeholders, including citizens' rights from the project's inception, and fostering transparency regarding the objectives, interests, and individual stakeholders' value.

A just energy transition requires not only the achievement of low-carbon goals but also the creation of fairer energy systems where special attention is given to identifying vulnerable groups and addressing the inequalities they experience. Governing energy transitions at the regional level may help formulate and implement tailored policies addressing vulnerabilities at the local level. However, there is limited understanding of the vulnerabilities that citizen groups experience in energy regions. We formulated three objectives to address this gap: I) identifying energy vulnerabilities in a regional transition context; II) understanding what citizen groups experience them and why; and III) identifying barriers that prevent policies from engaging with these groups. We applied a case-study research design to the Rotterdam-The Hague energy region in the Netherlands. Data collection involved semi-structured expert and stakeholder interviews and a review of newspaper articles and policy reports. We processed data with a thematic analysis drawing from energy justice literature and intersectionality theory. Three main energy vulnerabilities were identified: unaffordability of energy consumption, the lack of opportunity to own self-generation technology, and little to no inclusion in decision-making processes. The findings reveal five groups prone to vulnerability and the conditions that put them in a vulnerable situation, such as living in an energy-inefficient house. We conclude that regional energy transition policies should consider intersections of society while offering more support to municipalities to enable them to engage citizen groups at higher risk of energy vulnerability.

This study investigates the techno-economic impacts of various pricing policies on a photovoltaic (PV) system combined with battery energy storage (BES) as a single integrated system within a Dutch residential building. With the increasing adoption of PV systems, managing reverse power flow and grid stability becomes crucial. The study evaluates different scenarios, including net metering, feed-in tariffs (FiT) with time-of-use (TOU), RTP pricing, and subsidised BES. Using a multi-objective genetic algorithm, the optimal size and charging/discharging patterns of the PV-BES system were determined. The optimisation simultaneously minimises the Net Present Cost (NPC) and maximises the Self-Consumption Rate (SCR), to determine the PV-BES size that achieves an optimal balance between economic and technical performance. Results indicate that RTP pricing significantly enhances SCR. While the levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) and payback periods (PBP) are initially higher in the RTP pricing scenario, subsidising BES can mitigate these disadvantages. Additionally, incorporating price limit control variables into the energy management system (EMS) optimises the charging/discharging cycles, extending BES lifetimes and potentially increasing future revenues. These findings provide insights for policymakers to balance economic benefits and grid technical requirements through effective PV-BES integration.

Hydrogen is considered a promising energy carrier that can potentially contribute to low-carbon energy systems and achieving climate goals. Its introduction, however, is complex, involving multiple emerging niches and developments across various sociotechnical systems. Despite its significance, the multi-system nature of hydrogen has received limited attention in sustainability transition scholarship. This paper addresses this knowledge gap by examining the emerging hydrogen transition in the Netherlands from a multi-system sociotechnical perspective. To achieve this, we adopted a framework that considers multiple niches and sociotechnical systems in parallel, using Event Sequence Analysis (ESA). The analysis provides a systematic reconstruction of (niche-)processes as networks of events for analysing hydrogen niche formation from 2001 to 2020 across four sociotechnical systems: industry, electricity, transport, and the built environment. The results reveal that, despite positive discourse and ambitious plans, investments and implementation remained limited. We provide possible explanations for this progress through a multi-system lens.

Transnational municipal networks (TMNs) such as C40 or ICLEI have been posited to foster city-to-city learning in accelerating climate change mitigation and, thereby, facilitating the transition to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. However, the existing literature on the role of climate networks has hardly examined the relationship between membership and climate change mitigation outcomes and impact, without which it is premature to be optimistic about TMNs role in the net-zero transition. In this article, we address this gap through a mixed methods analysis in the case of the C40 cities initiative. We combine a staggered difference-in-differences regression to shed light on the relationship between membership in the C40 initiative and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions during 2002–18 in over 700 OECD cities with a qualitative cross-case analysis of Bogotá, Colombia and Copenhagen, Denmark to unpack how and when the C40 initiative influences climate action at the city level. Results show that there is no statistically significant relationship between C40 membership and CO₂ emissions, indicating that cities in the C40 initiative may not have reduced CO₂ emissions more than other OECD cities, after controlling for socioeconomic characteristics, weather, country characteristics, city fixed effects, time fixed effects, and city-specific annual time trends. Furthermore, the complementary qualitative analysis showed the C40 network's direct intervention is limited to increasing or maintaining the ambition of cities; the network was found to have limited influence on city-level policy planning and implementation. There is a need to further study and address local policy implementation for realizing net-zero in relation to TMN membership.

Understanding what conditions promote or hinder energy affordability in energy transitions is crucial for coal and carbon-intensive regions (CCIRs) dealing with the trade-off between phasing out fossil fuels and deepening social inequalities. While previous studies have included household and national-level conditions, this paper addresses the research gap covering regional-level conditions by drawing from regional energy governance, energy justice, and sociotechnical transition frameworks. A mixed-method approach consisting of a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis and case-study analysis is applied to 14 CCIRs in Europe, Asia, and North America. Results show that energy affordability in CCIRs is influenced by combinations of regional and (inter)national conditions. Whereas the existing literature and transition policies do not differentiate between the CCI sector's transition type, this paper highlights that conditions underlying energy (un)affordability differ when the CCI sector is phased out or has the option to transition. Based on the findings, this study calls for a multi-level governance approach to alleviating and preventing energy unaffordability and recommends that policy mixes like the EU Just Transition Fund consider the different types of CCIR transitions.