Abstract
This doctoral thesis contains three distinct papers divided into three chapters aiming at investigating interventions designed to foster the role of citizens in the energy transition, through the adoption of low carbon innovations, their societal implication and possible justice concerns. Together with the urgency of shifting to more sustainable energy systems, in order to mitigate anthropic climate change, policy makers are recognizing the pivotal role that individuals are gaining in the energy transition. Renewable energy systems are in fact characterized by a diffused and decentralized renewable energy production and consumption, and citizens are changing from being passive consumers to active and aware participants of the transformations occurring in the energy system. However, there are disparities in individuals’ capabilities that may hinder their active participation in the energy transition, e.g. some may be excluded due to lack of personal resources, and this may jeopardize the realization of a just and equal energy transition. Using original data from a survey administered to residents of three Alpine crossborder regions, the first chapter documents what drives individual propensity to choose electric vehicles, supporting policymakers in shaping effective low-carbon mobility policies. Results show that socio-demographics, social practices, and physical infrastructures play a significant role in the uptake of electric vehicles, but also that the ownership of EV risks to be a prerogative of well-educated and wealthy individuals, who can bear the still very high costs of purchasing, and to be not accessible to vulnerable individuals. The second chapter explores the phenomenon of prosumerism, i.e. energy consumers who also produce their own energy from on-site generators, by assessing the impact of a Spanish national policy, called ”Tax on the Sun”, on the diffusion of prosumerism. This paper uses annual region-level panel data to inform a Synthetic Control model, to compare Spanish regions to synthetic Spanish regions recreated using data of the regions of other three Western European countries. Results show that the practice of self-consumption requires underpinning by adequate policy mechanisms, which were finally missing in the case of ”Tax on the Sun”. This study finds that indeed at the regional level the ”Tax on the Sun” has had a negative impact if any at all. Finally, the third chapter analyses another intervention that is assumed to support the decarbonization of energy systems: the digitalization of energy infrastructure through the introduction of smart electricity meters in the residential sector in Italy. This study examines the Italian smart electricity meter roll-out in terms of distributional and equity effects among Italian households through a mixed-methods approach, i.e. combining quantitative and qualitative methods. Results confirm that the introduction of the smart electricity meter had generally a positive effect on the electricity expenditure of Italian households, nonetheless, such effect decreases with the level of household wealth, implying an unfair distribution of the economic benefits that the smart electricity meters create, at the expense of the most vulnerable households. Beyond household wealth, other discriminating factors of the digitalization of energy systems are gender, ability, race, age, nationality, and literacy.