Headline:
Social imbalance of the energy transition?
The current debate about the social acceptability of the energy transition needs to be more objective, otherwise it threatens to bring distress upon the “collaborative work of the energy transition”. Such is the claim of a Working Group Report issued by the Transdisciplinary Panel on Energy Change (TPEC) at the Institute for Adavanced Sustainability Studies (IASS). The report “Contributions to the social accounting of the energy transition” will be presented to the public on May 21, 2013 in the Kalkscheune (Berlin). The event will be opened and moderated by Prof. Dr. Klaus Töpfer, Executive Director of the IASS.
Starting point for this report is the public perception that energy costs are unevenly distributed and that parts of the population carry much more of the burden than others. For a clear statement about the distributions of costs, benefits, and the participation of different population groups, some reliable data and, above all, an approach to their collection and monitoring are missing.
With the aim to explore precisely this social dimension of the energy change and to better objectify the social debate, the Transdisciplinary Panel on Energy Change (TPEC) has launched an interdisciplinary working group with representatives of different scientific and social bodies in 2012. The jointly prepared report gives concrete recommendations for the social monitoring of the energy transition in the power sector with proposals for indicators on the topics such as distribution of benefits, distribution of costs and the “collaborative work energy transition”. The core message of the report is that the monitoring of the energy transition needs to be expanded beyond the tradition energy political objective triangle, in order to enable an objective assessment of costs and benefits. Furthermore, clear signs of fuel and electricity poverty are found, which leads to some recommendations on how to combat this kind of poverty.
The Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam carries out transdisciplinary research with international partners on pioneering solutions for global challenges and the major transformation processes such as the energy transition in Germany. Therefore, the Transdisciplinary Panel on Energy Change (TPEC) was established. The aim of the panel is to accompany the energy transition together with scientific partners as well as decision makers from politics, economy and society to give impetus for the future-oriented transformation of the energy system.