Community engagement for PED development and just energy transition: A research protocol

Positive energy districts are urban areas that produce more renewable energy than they consume, aiming for net-zero energy imports and zero CO2 emis-sions annually. They should bridge the gap between individual building-level energy efficiency and broader city-level climate neutrality goals. Despite constituting a reference terminology for all policies and programs of the European Commission for local-level energy transition, several challenges are still hindering PED’s effective operationalization and their contribution to just transitions. The JPI Urban Europe-funded project Citizens4PED aims to integrate socio-cultural and institutional/regulatory dimensions into the still-evolving technical and economic framework that underpins efforts to develop PEDs. The project particularly highlights the importance of energy justice as a core component of PED development and explores how renewable energy communities can enable just transitions, especially in socially marginalized neighborhoods. For this purpose, Citizens4PED proposes using Living Labs to foster community empowerment in the co-creation of energy solutions and transition pathways and develops a specific research protocol for the analysis of stakeholders and the engagement of the local community, including vul-nerable groups. This chapter critically discusses such a protocol, building on stakeholder analysis as a well-established approach to participatory planning and community engagement, while highlighting its methodological and ethi-cal pitfalls and suggesting potential remedies and alternative research designs.