This booklet describes the outcomes of four years of research and co-creation in the Venserpolder neighborhood. This research was done as part of the Local Inclusive Future Energy (LIFE) project. The LIFE project ran from 2021 to 2025 and was a collaboration between research institutions, the municipality of Amsterdam, companies, and local stakeholders in Amsterdam Southeast.

The project had two goals: first, to develop smart solutions to reduce the congestion in the electricity grid. Second, to explore how such solutions can reduce energy poverty in Amsterdam Southeast. From this second goal, the initiative emerged to establish an energy community in Venserpolder.

This booklet describes how residents, researchers, and local actors collaborated as much as possible. We describe the co-creation activities and the common responses and concerns of residents. Additionally, the booklet provides information on what an energy community is, how it functions and how a neighborhood can transition away from natural gas in the future.

First of all, this booklet is intended for residents: to provide information about the research but, more importantly, as an invitation to participate. Together, we can ensure a stable and low energy price, energy security, and stronger cooperation within the neighborhood. This booklet may also be of interest to researchers, municipal employees, and other professionals working in the energy transition.

Dit boekje beschrijft de uitkomsten van 4 jaar onderzoek en bewonersparticipatie in de wijk Venserpolder. Dit onderzoek is uitgevoerd als onderdeel van het Local Inclusive Future Energy (LIFE) project. Het LIFE project duurde van 2021 tot 2025, en was een samenwerking tussen onderzoeksinstellingen, de gemeente Amsterdam, bedrijven en lokale stakeholders in Amsterdam Zuidoost.

Het project had twee doelen: ten eerste om slimme oplossingen te bedenken voor de overbelasting van het elektriciteitsnet. Ten tweede om te onderzoeken hoe zulke oplossingen de energiearmoede in Amsterdam Zuidoost kunnen verminderen. Uit dit tweede doel is het initiatief voortgekomen om in Venserpolder een energiegemeenschap op te richten.

Dit boekje beschrijft hoe bewoners, onderzoekers en lokale partijen zoveel mogelijk hebben samengewerkt. We beschrijven de co-creatie activiteiten en de veelgehoorde reacties en zorgen van bewoners die daar aan bod kwamen. Ook geeft het boekje informatie over wat een energiegemeenschap is, en hoe je in de toekomst als wijk van het gas af kunt gaan.

In de eerste plaats is dit boekje bedoeld voor bewoners: om informatie te krijgen, maar vooral als uitnodiging om mee te doen. Samen kun je zorgen voor een vaste lage energieprijs, voor leveringszekerheid, en voor sterkere samenwerking in de wijk. Ook kan dit boekje interessant zijn voor onderzoekers, werknemers van de gemeente, en andere professionals die in de energietransitie werken.

This brochure provides a set of recommendations for how to organize energy transition projects in a more inclusive way. These recommendations are meant for anyone working in the local energy transition who wants to build stronger collaborations between residents, municipalities, researchers and other professionals. The recommendations address a variety of challenges and are based on lessons from four years of field research in Amsterdam Southeast.

The research was conducted as part of the Local Inclusive Future Energy (LIFE) project. The LIFE project took place between 2021 and 2025 and was a collaboration between universities, the municipality of Amsterdam, companies and local stakeholders in Amsterdam Southeast. The figure on the right shows a vision for a local energy community in the Venserpolder neighbourhood, which the LIFE project worked towards. The photos below give an impression of the various co-creation activities that were part of this project, and which resulted in this brochure.

Deze brochure bevat een set aanbevelingen over hoe projecten in de energietransitie op een meer inclusieve manier georganiseerd kunnen worden. Deze aanbevelingen zijn bedoeld voor iedereen die actief is in de lokale energietransitie en sterkere samenwerkingen wil creëren tussen bewoners, overheden, onderzoekers en andere partijen. De aanbevelingen zijn gebaseerd op vier jaar veldonderzoek in Amsterdam Zuidoost, en de leerlessen daaruit.

Het onderzoek is uitgevoerd als onderdeel van het Local Inclusive Future Energy (LIFE) project. Het LIFE project vond plaats tussen 2021 en 2025 in Amsterdam Zuidoost, en was een samenwerking tussen kennisinstellingen, de gemeente Amsterdam, bedrijven en lokale partijen in Amsterdam Zuidoost. De afbeelding rechts laat een visie zien voor een lokale energiecoöperatie in de wijk Venserpolder, waar het LIFE project aan heeft bijgedragen. De onderstaande foto’s geven een indruk van de diverse co-creatie activiteiten die onderdeel waren van dit project, en die hebben geresulteerd in deze brochure.

This article proposes to support human-centered energy transitions through design fiction. Design fiction is conceptualized as a form of worldbuilding in the sense that design fiction not only represents alternative realities but also intervenes in the processes of their emergence. For the context of energy transitions, this article proposes to approach worldbuilding through an understanding of and engagement with energy infrastructures. The distributed agencies and lengthy time horizons that characterize infrastructural development pose interesting challenges for designers and can be subverted by leveraging the poetic and aesthetic qualities of infrastructure through design fiction. The article discusses such aspects of energy infrastructures and expected developments in the transition to renewable energy. The approach is illustrated using seven emerging energy worlds, and future steps are identified to develop these into proper design fiction further. Overall, our approach draws together technological, political, and economic trends in the energy sector and provides pointers for designers and artists to intervene and co-shape energy transitions.

This article critiques the prevailing North-South divide within the discourse on decolonizing design, recognizing its historical significance while exposing its limitations in advancing decolonial agendas. The uncritical adoption of this dichotomy often leads to oversimplification, exclusion, and isolation, limiting the practical impact of decolonizing efforts. Drawing on insights from a global design anthropological study on energy exchange, we advocate for a post-development perspective that transcends the North-South divide. Our study presents three key insights: colonization is rooted in ideology and requires global reform for decolonization; mutual learning between the Global North and South is essential; and infrastructure plays a crucial role in envisioning and implementing decolonial alternatives. This work aims to stimulate further discourse toward a dialogic, contextual, infrastructural, and comparative post-development paradigm in decolonizing design.

Addressing global challenges, such as achieving an inclusive energy transition, involves navigating through prevalent ideologies and interconnected infrastructures that advocate specific ways of engaging with the world. However, these dominant ideologies and infrastructures can impose significant constraints on alternative ways of being—essentially hindering the design of sustainable futures with global applicability. Designers must recognize and emancipate themselves from these forms of colonization.

In this context, we introduce a global design anthropology program dedicated to embracing a decolonized understanding of the emerging phenomenon of 'energy exchange between households.' The prevalent comprehension of this phenomenon has predominantly been influenced by neoliberal market thinking, primarily centered around the concept of energy 'trading.' The program started with anthropology-through-design field research in two rural villages in India, employing an open-design energy infrastructure to investigate and conceptualize diverse and alternative ways of energy exchange. Insights gathered and concepts identified were subsequently expanded upon through additional field research conducted in the Netherlands.

The outcomes underscore how a global and open exploration of a phenomenon through design anthropology can decolonize knowledge and unveil alternative ways of being that are scalable. Our work seeks to motivate design anthropologists to challenge established perspectives and phenomena knowledge by actively engaging in global anthropology-through-design programs. This involves fostering awareness, transcending dominant and colonized frameworks, and exploring through open-design infrastructures in diverse global field settings.

Schools, as dynamic microcosms, house diverse members with unique roles, capabilities, and perspectives, influencing and being influenced by local contexts. However, their role in neighbourhood energy transitions is often overlooked. Greengage addresses this gap, offering a transformative monitoring tool developed through interdisciplinary collaboration across 12 European secondary schools.

Greengage is a socio-technical digital solution designed to impart energy knowledge and foster a representative and inclusive learning community. It serves as a collective monitoring tool for a school community to learn about their social and technical contexts that influence their energy consumption and comfort.

Greengage structures the activity of monitoring based on an energy literacy framework. It gives shape to the activity of monitoring by means of Q&A’s in the form of dilemmas, myths, and preferred scenarios. Visual metaphors provide feedback loops to the community on the monitoring process and outcomes. Greengage’s implementation involves 10-inch tablets as digital interactive displays in public areas and an informative large display in a public area.

Key to its success is the use of recognition and procedural justice principles enabling inclusive and collective learning of both hard and soft competencies including cognitive, behavioural, and affective. It combines design techniques of storytelling, gamification, and data visualisation to make learning a playful and sustained practice:

1. Greengage applies storytelling to build an engaging collective learning narrative:
a. E-dentities, E-menies, and E-lemints: characters representing energy social context, social barriers, and energy technical context respectively.
b. Q&A’s formatted as dilemmas, preferred scenarios, and myths: interactions facilitating knowledge sharing of values, preferences and experiences on energy and comfort around daily activities.

2. Greengage implements gamification to build playful interactions for knowledge sharing:
a. Metaphors: A building school, rainbow, and foundations visualize and animate learning progress, encouraging engagement and sustained learning practices.
b. Scoring: The intensity and colourfulness of the rainbow and the physical aspect of the school building visualise the quantification of the frequency and diversity of answers and participation of the community.

3. Greengage communicates the progress and impact of collective learning by means of visual feedback loops:
a. Progress of frequency and diversity of participation using the metaphor earlier explained.
b. Impact of self-reporting and sensing data of comfort and energy variables using two abstraction layers: high level of abstraction using non-technical language to enrich Q&A feedback by aligning answers with collective data and sensing data when available; low abstraction layer provides numeric visualizations of real-time and historical sensing data enhanced by e-lemints visual appearance.

Insights from Greengage implementation highlight three future development: the need to institutionalize learning interactions, support diverse learning levels, and explore cross-community collaborations by establishing Greengage Clubs, AI-supported learning paths, and social computational analysis for valuable local and global contexts insights. Greengage stands as a beacon, showcasing the transformative potential of school communities in accelerating energy transition in European cities.

This paper describes a design anthropology approach toward design ethics, which understands design ethics in a relational and emergent manner. We characterize how ethical issues and judgments emerge from the continuous stream of social interactions, collaborations, and relations that constitute the design process. The approach recognizes that there is a fundamental uncertainty in how social engagements and associated ethical issues in a design process unfold. Design anthropology aims to remain open to such emergent understandings, and fosters a sense of empathy and practice of care towards collaborators. The approach is illustrated by reflecting on empirical findings from an interdisciplinary energy transition project in Amsterdam South-East. The findings show how unexpected ethical issues emerged in the design process that challenged the authors to navigate, with care and empathy, between the opposing needs of project collaborators.

Schools are complex physical and social institutions within national education systems. They account for significant energy consumption and like other buildings can demonstrate inefficient patterns of energy use. Poor energy performance of educational facilities is an intricate issue driven by complex causality of interconnected and dynamic factors. Addressing this issue requires a systemic approach, which is heretofore lacking. The aim of this research is to present and describe a systemic framework to facilitate energy reduction in schools across different European contexts. This transdisciplinary approach to sustainable energy use has been piloted in 13 post-primary schools located in six countries in northwest Europe. The research implements a series of planned activities and interventions, which help to unveil a systemic approach to improving energy efficiency in schools. The findings demonstrate how this approach, together with its ensuing methodologies and strategies, can contribute to reducing carbon emissions and improve knowledge and awareness around sustainable energy.

The original version of the article does not contain information about the funding of the research. The text below can be added to the existing text in relation to funding. ENERGE is an Interreg North-West Europe (NWE) project, co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund Project Number NWE-827.

Critical challenges in energy transitions are social and cultural – not just technical and economic. This paper shares research in an interdisciplinary consortium developing an innovative smart energy system, and demonstrates the value of ethnography in supporting energy transitions and local energy communities. Our fieldwork illuminated frictions stemming from the invisibility of energy infrastructure and lack of a relatable narrative, people’s past experiences with public participation in the energy transition, and conflict between long-term policy goals with people’s short-term concerns. The project’s typical techno-economic framing of renewable energy projects also inhibited the building of social connections and rapport within our fieldwork. Using a design anthropology approach, we describe how ethnographers can support the emergence of local energy communities and identify future directions to address the frictions identified. These directions include making energy systems more socially experienceable, mediating between people and institutions, and embedding ethnographic engagements in institutional structures to ensure continuity.

The literature on Design Anthropology (DA) is skewed towards discussion exploring anthropology's potential for design. In contrast, discourse on how design can contribute to anthropology is somewhat limited. This article proposes an ‘Anthropology through Design’ (AtD) approach by reflecting on a study on the emergent phenomenon of ‘energy exchange’. The AtD approach aims to generate anthropological knowledge of an emergent sociocultural phenomenon through the use of a design intervention. This article describes four intertwined tracks—Framing, Design Intervening, Ethnographic Particular Understanding, and Anthropological General Understanding—of our AtD process. The proposed AtD approach takes a strategic step in relocating ‘design’ from being an object of anthropology to becoming an instrument for doing anthropology.

Bangladesh has the largest proportion of people exposed to arsenic contamination in water. Studies have shown that awareness campaigns have positively influenced communities regarding their choice of safe water sources. In order to reach and engage communities in adopting safe water supply systems, there is scope in using smartphones to help in monitoring, operation and maintenance and bringing awareness around water safety. The Tapp-BDP app is being developed to tackle this. Its desired functionalities are: water quality field testing, service delivery, payment, interaction, and a knowledge domain on water safety. Specific to the knowledge domain of the app, the challenge is to digitally convey a complex topic in an understandable manner to improve trust within the water supply system and to empower the stakeholders to take charge of their own water supply. ICT provides the opportunity to quickly convey knowledge in new, attractive ways, but is not always inclusive to all. Through the investigation of the complex water safety context, the attributes of the target group as well as using smartphones as a communication channel the outcomes of this project resulted in a set of guidelines that support the development of digital knowledge.

In recent years, numerous studies have explored the opportunities and challenges for emerging decentralized energy systems and business models. However, few studies have focussed specifically on the economic and social value associated with three emerging models: peer-to-peer energy trading (P2P), community self-consumption (CSC) and transactive energy (TE). This article presents the findings of a systematic literature review to address this gap. The paper makes two main contributions to the literature. Firstly, it offers a synthesis of research on the social and economic value of P2P, CSC and TE systems, concluding that there is evidence for a variety of sources of social value (including energy independence, local benefits, social relationships, environmental responsibility and participation and purpose) and economic value (including via self-consumption of renewable electricity, reduced electricity import costs, and improved electricity export prices). Secondly, it identifies factors and conditions necessary for the success of these models, which include willingness to participate, participant engagement with technology, and project engagement of households and communities, among other factors. Finally, it discusses conflicts and trade-offs in the value propositions of the models, how the three models differ from one another in terms of the value they aim to deliver and some of the open challenges that require further attention by researchers and practitioners.

This chapter claims that the global North’s vision of sustainable energy transition (SET), which informs policies and infrastructure developments, holds a partial account of diverse energy-related practices and associated values that are endemic to local communities. Referring to the EU directive, this chapter points towards the implicit bias about the role of advanced technologies in SET. The vision of SET expressed in the EU directive has the interlocked relation with market designs, economic growth and underlying rational values that might result in a mismatch with needs, values and practices of local communities. This chapter presents empirical observations from an ethnographic field-research on community-managed solar mini-grids in rural India to hint at alternative possibilities and contribute to a more inclusive vision of SET. In particular, it demonstrates that practices of improvisation, redistribution of energy and adaptation of mini-grid informed by the villagers’ social, cultural and economic needs are entangled with local knowledge and values. By learning from the local practices, knowledge, values and narratives with energy technologies, this chapter proposes to take a step towards a “big picture” of the sustainable transition to decentralised energy.

In this paper, we report on an interactive visualization that served multiple purposes and diverse roles in a research-through-design (RtD) study. The visualization is part of the study on the sociocultural factors that shape energy exchanges between households. It showcases an ethnographic data combined with quantitative logs collected for 11 months, comprising of around 1200 energy exchanges between 27 energy-receiving households and one energy-giving household in a rural village in India. In this paper, we reflect on how designing the visualization as a process as well as the visualization as a tool, played three significant roles in the RtD study. First, as a process, it helped design researchers to select, reduce, and summarise qualitative and quantitative findings and find connections between them. Second, interactive visualization as a tool became a means of disseminating longitudinal data. Third, interactive visualization as a boundary object enabled interaction, cooperation, and collaboration amongst designers, researchers, engineers, and anthropologists. Overall, we suggest to the design research community to consider designing of an interactive visualization as a way to make sense of longitudinal collected in a RtD project and to utilize their design skills for such creative ways of analysis and knowledge dissemination.

With the growth of decentralized, off-grid, and distributed renewable energy systems across the globe, an arena for energy exchanges between households is opening up. As compared to traditional ‘centralized’ energy supply systems, in these emerging energy systems households are imagined to acquire agency by having choice and control over inter-household energy exchanges within neighborhoods or villages. The existing literature on such scenarios of energy exchanges is mostly rooted in a techno-economic analysis built upon visions of rational choice approaches and lacks discussion on the sociocultural dimensions of energy exchanges. This research utilizes theoretical perspectives from economic anthropology to study the phenomenon of inter-household energy exchange. The methodological approach followed takes inspiration from discourses of design anthropology, research through design, and ethnography. This approach is instantiated in the form of a longitudinal multi-method study conducted at two off-grid villages in rural India. This interdisciplinary research makes knowledge contribution to the fields of energy studies and design anthropology. This dissertation develops conceptual knowledge of inter-household energy exchanges by investigating the social and cultural embeddedness of energy exchanges in a system where householders can decide with whom to exchange locally produced energy. Overall, the dissertation showcases that when people get to structure energy exchanges, they do so by employing a range of social, cultural, moral and economic notions, and demonstrates that there is more to energy exchanges than what the dominant rational choice perspective describes. This work proposes a novel approach called Anthropology-through-Design (AtD), which facilitates generating anthropological knowledge about a sociocultural phenomenon through a design intervention. The AtD approach takes a strategic step in relocating 'design' from being an object of anthropology to becoming an instrument for doing anthropology.

Within the areas of distributed, off-grid, and decentralized energy, there is a growing interest in local energy exchanges. A crucial component of an energy exchange is a return provided by an energy-receiver to an energy-giver for the energy provided. The existing energy literature on such returns is primarily limited to monetary returns and lacks a critical discussion on the different types of monetary and non-monetary returns possible and variation in people’ preferences for these. Based on an ethnographic ‘research intervention’ study conducted at two off-grid villages in rural India for 11 months, this article presents a sociocultural understanding of returns. The article presents a classification of returns consisting of three types, i.e., in-cash, in-kind and intangible, and proposes a conceptual model of ‘returns-continuum.’ The article showcases how people's preference for a type of return varies with the nature of their social relationships with each other and suggests that configuring a return is not merely an economic act but a complex sociocultural process. Finally, the article recommends to energy researchers and practitioners to enable diversity in returns, to acknowledge dynamics of social relations in returns, to interconnect energy economy with the local in-kind economy, and to engage with ethnographic approaches.