Co-Designing Just Energy Transitions

#EUKICON26 || Day 1 || 02:00 PM

The workshop aims to reframe vulnerability in the energy transition, exploring how placing vulnerable groups at the centre of action enables social innovation.

Description

Rather than treating energy poverty as a technical issue, the session will highlight it as a symptom of broader structural challenges in energy and governance with vulnerable groups as agents of change.

Participants will be encouraged to think beyond traditional policy and implementation approaches and to explore co-designed social innovation models that integrate technical solutions with new organisational, governance, and participatory practices. The workshop will take a systems thinking approach to connect energy transition with other important aspects of livelihoods, including energy poverty. Vulnerability will be understood as multi-layered through an intersectional approach.

Building on this perspective, participants will work with three real-life inspired case scenarios from Central and Eastern Europe, focusing on different vulnerable groups who are facing energy poverty and barriers to accessing support. First, they will analyse needs and key challenges, linking social vulnerability to the energy transition. Next, they will co-design inclusive solutions, identifying relevant stakeholders, participation models and ways of overcoming structural and financial barriers. Finally, insights from the cases will be brought together to identify transferable lessons and key principles for a just and inclusive energy transition.

Facilitator

• Jakub Csabay, Comenius University