Identifying and overcoming societal barriers to sustainable energy adaptation

Project Description

The transition to a sustainable energy future necessitates large scale energy transformation. The transition must not only achieve climate goals and targets without unnecessary disruption to economic activity, but must also be socially and politically acceptable. Sustainable energy adaptations that are perceived to impose an undue burden on citizens will not be implementable. This project aims to identify, by means of behavioural laboratory experimentation, the extent to which Irish citizens value equity, economic activity and environmental impacts in choosing sustainable energy adaptations, whether their preferences can be updated by providing information on the outcomes of such adaptations, and whether the type of information provided to them makes any difference. Participants' prior knowledge and interest in sustainable energy adaptation will be ascertained, followed by their preferences regarding sustainable energy adaptation measures. These preferences will then be used to parameterise and run the I3E macroeconomic model, and a model for distributional analysis, and the results of both will be relayed to the participants. Participants will be given an opportunity to update their preferences in light of this information. By varying the feedback mechanisms and the results presented to participants, we can identify whether equity, economic or environmental effects are of greatest concern to citizens, and thus gain valuable insights in how to design and communicate sustainable energy policies that are most likely to gain long term social and political acceptance.