The Horizon 2020 project SONNET – Social Innovation in Energy Transitions – investigates how social innovation contributes to the transformation of energy systems. But, what innovations exist in Europe today, who creates them, and how do they work?

As a first step towards answering these questions, SONNET has analysed 500 examples of social innovations in energy (SIEs) across Europe. Similar cases were clustered in a typology according to two axes – whether they involve new ways of doing, thinking, or organising, and whether those involved are cooperating, exchanging, competing, or in conflict. The typology is publicly available and can help us all better understand and support SIEs.

Dr. Julia Wittmayer, a researcher at the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions (DRIFT), recently expanded on how the typology was developed at the kick-off webinar in the SONNET webinar series. This shed light on SIEs including, for example, highlighting that SIEs do not only originate from bottom-up initiatives or civic engagement, but also emerge from the public and private entities.

The City of Antwerp, for example, is using their “Stadslab2050” as an ‘experimentation space’ for innovative and sustainable solutions. The lab is a new organisational structure to incubate innovative ideas through participant cooperation, and thus represents cooperating/organising in the typology. Identifying this categorisation is a step towards the City of Antwerp’s work in SONNET, which aims to examine how the Stadslab2050 contributes to the city’s energy transition.

There are also social innovations being applied across typology categories. One example is “prosumerism”: whereby an individual both produces and consumes energy. Prosumers can, for example, lead energy education (exchange/thinking), or collaborate on energy generation and consumption (cooperation/doing).

The Stadslab2050 and prosumerism examples were also explored in the recent SONNET webinar by Dr. Jana Deforche (City of Antwerp) and Dr. Donal Brown (University of Leeds), who detailed their experiences with SIEs, and presented results from previous research – including from the PROSEU project – that sheds light on how and by whom SIE models are being influenced.

The webinar series “Explored: Social Innovation in Energy Transitions” will continue to bring diverse groups together to discuss how SIEs can contribute to more sustainable energy systems in Europe. Stay tuned for updates and join us in May for the next edition to take the conversation forward!

Find out more about the SONNET project here, watch the recording of the kick-off webinar here, and follow SONNET on Twitter (@SONNET_energy) to stay up to date.