The market uptake of RES depends on a complex combination of political, geographical, economic, social and cultural factors that are specifically intertwined in each locality. In addition, the acceptance and willingness of directly affected stakeholders to support the deployment of RES depends on the perceived fairness about how the decisions are made (procedural justice) and how the benefits are shared (distributive justice). POWERUP adopts a holistic approach towards the market uptake of RES for electricity and provides a set of open source tools and methodologies addressing all these factors, tailoring the RES projects to the local conditions and increaseing their acceptability and market uptake. The tools include a GIS-based decision support tool for initial feasibility assessment, a business model toolkit for reconciling stakeholder requirements and producing equitable business models, and a co-creation toolkit for engaging the stakeholders in co-design of a RES project that is reproducible and tailored to the local needs and conditions. The tools are supported by a social acceptability strategy for RES that provides guidance for considering all social aspects in the decision-making and design process. The POWERUP tools and methodologies will be extensively validated in 4 European regions and replicated in 10 follower regions, covering a variety of conditions all over Europe. The project aims to involve >700 public and private stakeholders and organise 46 workshops, incresing the perception of fairness of the RES business models by 80% and the community acceptance by at least 50%. The project consortium is a team from 5 EU countries that comprises regional energy agencies, public authorities, universities, and research centres and includes leading experts in Social Science and Humanities, Business, Renewable Energies, ICT and data science, legal and regulatory framework, with large practical experience in promotion of the renewable energies uptake.

The Erasmus Mundus SPOT Master's Degree - Social Psychology of Transformation is a new international study program that focuses on social psychology for progressive social change, i.e. for the creation of more just, equal and diverse societies.

This project aims to plan and implement a process for involving communities and interest groups in the Alviela basin regarding the removal of obsolete barriers and associated measures to be implemented by GEOTA in the region, with the aim of improving the connectivity of the Alviela River. The engagement process to be proposed and implemented will be based on the principles and tools of participation and co-creation (Reilly et al., 2018; Gato et al., 2014) that have been identified and discussed by the most recent academic and grey literature as relevant to developing non-instrumentalized participatory processes (Fox et al., 2016; Germaine et al., 2021) and that allow for the effective participation of affected communities as communities of relevance (Batel, 2018; Ryder, Walker, Batel et al., 2023). These principles and methodological tools will be adapted to the context under study.

The green energy transition is being promoted around the world as key to tackle climate change. However, as it is increasingly fostered and associated measures implemented, such as the deployment of renewable energy infrastructures (REI), contestation also has risen. Social sciences’ research has attempted to analyze and understand this relevant social issue in the last decades and proposed several and distinct conceptual frameworks for that. The NIMBY (Not in my backyard) framework has been one of the most widespread and well-known frameworks for explaining opposition specifically to REI but is being increasingly questioned by more recent frameworks that emphasize instead the roles of issues of (in)justice in REI related decision-making processes and policies and their impact on negative responses to these infrastructures. However, the proliferation of conceptual frameworks on energy justice and related issues regarding REI has been immense in recent years and it is difficult to, from a practical and empirical perspective, understand how exactly their relevant insights and contributions can be applied to particular REI projects and decision-making. This project aims to contribute to that by conducting a systematic academic and grey literature review of the most recent literature on community responses to renewable energy and associated infrastructures. For this, solar energy and associated infrastructures will be particularly focused, as an expanding and crucial technology within the renewable energy transition, namely in countries like Portugal and Switzerland. Based on this literature review we will then propose an integrated framework to be discussed and validated with key experts and stakeholders in the area. Based on these two previous tasks, the end goal of this project is to deliver a handbook with guidelines for policymakers, energy companies and local communities, on best practices for the successful deployment of REI, particularly solar.

As energy prices have surged throughout Europe, affecting all households (directly or indirectly) through their energy bill, citizens increasingly want to contribute to the renewable energy transition. Next to market parties and government, the role of citizens in energy communities (ECs) in developing Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) can and should be strengthened, and wider groups of citizens can be involved. From this shared problem and understanding across Europe, the project will work on ‘Creating, Optimizing and Planning Positive EneRgy districts while connecting citizens’ energy at different geographical levels’ (COPPER). The first objective is to co-develop P2P citizens-based support- and information systems that are inclusive of energy-vulnerable groups and which foster active energy citizenship. In P2P platforms information is exchanged on the energy transition, support and coaching are given, and citizens will be trained to become civil energy coaches. This will start from specific neighborhoods, and lead to exchanges between different communities and (eventually) in the wider region. Citizens'  upport and information systems more generally will be identified, based on desk research and contact with key stakeholders and resident groups in each country (see letters of support). Then these platforms will be evaluated in terms of the autonomous role of citizens, facilities offered, sharing of tools, P2P help and coaching, nature of topics and challenges discussed among residents, degree of inclusiveness, and potential for innovation towards PEDs. Moreover, PEDs need to be embedded within the wider energy system by creating reliable entities such as organized ECs with intermediary roles, linking supply, demand, and storage in the energy market. The second objective is to develop different models based on certain ‘archetypes’ of energy communities. This means the modeling of differences in both scale and configuration of ECs, in different country settings, to...

Focusing on hybrid trends and models of living (e.g. cohousing and coliving and working flexible and multifunctional spaces), HybGen aims to understand which resilient values and survival strategies young adults (20-35 years old) of Lisbon and Oslo are adopting, and how such strategies intersect with urban green care. The goal is to delve into the hybridity of the new urban lifestyles and the blockages of a generation that, despite being one of the best prepared to face the new challenges of the digital transition, is being sacrificed by the urban economic extractive model. A comparative study will be carried out through participatory action research. This includes fieldwork conducted in both cities; participatory workshops with different stakeholders; a joint seminar to discuss and share findings and good practices; an open-access publication. This bilateral initiative will promote the cooperation, exchange and sharing of knowledge and networking between Portuguese and Norwegian entities, identifying best practices and producing useful policy recommendations for common problems.

Sexual assistance - activity in which professionals provide sexual services to people with disabilities - is a pioneering research topic in Portugal. At the European level there are associations that promote sexual assistance in several countries and in some of them it is a recognized service. In Portugal there is no association created for this purpose. However, sex workers provide sex services to clients with disabilities. To address the interest of some people with physical disabilities in resorting to sexual assistance, the research team, whom has a vast experience in the study of different axes of social oppression, identified the need to understand social representations of Portuguese population concerning sexual assistance and to start an informed debate in order to outline public policy recommendations. 

One of the major problems faced by contemporary climate-changed and globalized societies is increasing land use pressure, especially in rural areas, with climate change-induced natural disasters and political conflicts driving the migration of individuals and communities, together with policies for the deployment of large-scale renewable energy infrastructures for mitigating climate change. In fact, a growing body of social sciences’ research has been concerned with understanding why, despite people tending to agree with renewable energy generation in general, local resistance to the deployment of renewable energy infrastructures is often found [1;2]. This body of research has been driven by trying to understand local opposition to renewable energy infrastructures in order to overcome it [2]. However, more recent and critical approaches to this research have begun to highlight that (1) increased local resistance might be due to the fact that renewable energy transitions can entail as many social and environmental justice issues as the non-renewable status quo [3; 4; 5; 6]; and that (2) the rise of right-wing populist socio-political configurations and communication might also be pushing for climate change skepticism and an associated backlash to renewable energy transitions [7; 8; 9; 10; 11].  However, most research so far has failed to bring those two lines of research together and to explore how the communicative and socio-spatial organization of the so-called renewable energy transitions, so far mainly materialized through the top-down and non-participatory deployment of large-scale renewable energy infrastructures such as wind and solar farms, might also contribute to the adherence of communities to mass communicated right-wing populist framings, such as on anti-elitism, nationalism and nativism [11; 12], which could, in turn, foster local resistance not only to energy transitions but also to social inclusion and diversity. In fact, the results of the mos...

The EU has used the Strategic Energy Technology Plan to transfer power to consumers, by decentralising the energy ecosystem by establishing “100 positive energy districts by 2025 and 80% of electricity consumption to be managed by consumers in 4 out of 5 households”. The SMART-BEEjS recognises that this requires the systemic synergy of the different stakeholders, balancing attention towards technological and policy oriented drivers, citizens and society needs, providers and technology capabilities and value generation system synergies in order to deliver the transition without leaving large parts of the population behind. Smart-BEEjS covers all angles of this eco-system, to train a generation of transformative and influential champions in policy design, techno-economic planning and business model innovation in the energy and efficiency sectors, mindful of the personal and social dimensions, as well as the nexus of interrelation between stakeholders in energy generation, efficiency and management. 

The project MISTRAL, funded by European Union within the Horizon2020 program, involves 15 linked PhD studentships based at 7 European universities with a variety of industrial placements, summer schools and shared training. The project aims to nurture a new generation of researchers who can effectively evaluate the complexity of social acceptance issues facing the deployment of renewable energy infrastructure and propose innovative solutions in a variety of research, government and business contexts. MISTRAL will do this by fostering a vibrant inter-disciplinary environment to change the way we understand and respond to declining social acceptance of renewable energy infrastructure and engage a wider range of inter-sectoral stakeholders to develop innovative solutions. It will also provide an innovative training environment where young researchers can develop advanced skills in research and transferable skills, benefit from a range of diverse secondment experiences and debate current issues with some of the world leading researchers in the field, in order to develop advanced capacities for progressing Europe’s energy transition.