Abstract
Digitalization pervasively impacts citizens' lives in contemporary society. Energy infrastructure digitalization can dramatically enhance the transition toward low-carbon energy systems by improving energy efficiency and transforming the supply-demand interface. This digital and low-carbon—or twin—transition presents complex challenges in relation to empowering individuals and societal groups fairly and inclusively, with implications for daily energy uses and societal practices. Critical institutionalism, notably the concept of bricolage, offers a conceptual lens to understand how diverse actors—especially ordinary (energy) citizens—navigate the complexity of twin transitions. We focus on the second rollout of smart electricity meters in Trento, an Italian city in the 2020s, following the first one in the early 2000s, as a European frontrunner with ample scope for policy learning and adaptation. We draw on 23 semi-structured interviews with citizens as prospective primary beneficiaries of smart meters to articulate how digitalization is routinized into evolving societal practices. We show how this incorporation hardly shifts overarching societal dynamics, despite changing energy infrastructure ontologies. These findings problematize the potential of digitalization for empowerment that has long been promoted in policy discourse on twin transitions in Europe.