Harnessing social innovation for energy justice: a business model perspective

By Ralitsa Hiteva, Benjamin Sovacool. 2017

128 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper uses a business model framework to discuss how principles of energy justice - in particular, equitable distribution of costs and benefits, affordability, due process and greater participation in decision-making - can be embedded in business model innovations for energy, through social innovation. The paper discusses four cases at different scales (local, subnational, regional and global) to highlight opportunities for introducing principles of energy justice into the core of business models of companies. By doing so, the paper offers a critical perspective on the potential of business model innovation to be guided through a more broadly defined understanding of value enhanced by concepts of energy justice. The discussion of the four case studies—the Carbon Cooperative, Robin Hood Energy, RenEsco, and the Yansa Community Interest Company—highlights the importance of creating supportive wider environments for social and business model innovations, such as the development of skills, knowledge and social capital, through interventions coming from multiple levels and focused on different aspects of energy generation, supply and use (i.e. finance and technical implementation). Going against the grain of current policy, the study implies a shift away from upscaling innovations by taking them to the national scale, and towards creating supportive conditions for more local deals in different geographic locations.

Subfields: Finance, Global and Planetary Change, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/92c999e17b00486fbfc24b8118ea6bd5795e10aa

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Finance

1. Mark Davis
2. Donal Brown
3. S. Hall
4. Benjamin Sovacool
5. Lucy Baker
6. Lubna Rashid

In Global and Planetary Change

1. Benjamin Sovacool
2. Donal Brown
3. S. Hall
4. Mark Davis
5. Matthew J. Burke
6. Lucy Baker

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Benjamin Sovacool
2. Donal Brown
3. S. Hall
4. Mark Davis
5. Lucy Baker
6. Matthew J. Burke
7. Erich J. Schwarz

Citations in the corpus

• What Sustainable Development Goals Do Social Innovations Address? A Systematic Review and Content Analysis of Social Innovation Literature (2019, background): “, from sustainable consumption [6,7] to health issues [8,9] or from sustainable energy [10,11] to sustainable cities and communities [12–14]).”
• Prosumers in the post subsidy era: an exploration of new prosumer business models in the UK (2019, background): “It is argued this new paradigm represents an opportunity to increase energy democracy, and better share the proceeds of the transition (Hiteva and Sovacool, 2017).”
• New frontiers and conceptual frameworks for energy justice (2017, background): “Hiteva and Sovacool (2017) for instance examine the extent that elements of energy justice can be incorporated into the development of innovative business models for energy services, equipment, and supply.”
• What is prosumerism for? Exploring the normative dimensions of decentralised energy transitions (2020, methodology): “non-financial social and environmental values (social cohesion, distributional equity, clean air) [15], which do not have a monetary exchange value.”