Energy democracy: Reclaiming a unique agenda in energy transitions research
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The intersection of energy transitions and equity is a rapidly expanding area of research and concern. Within this literature, energy democracy and energy justice have arisen as two equity-related concepts sharing both overlap and distinctions, at times leading to conceptual confusion and diverging recommendations on how to address their overlap. Given the importance that research adequately wrestles with the intersection of energy transitions and equity, it is critical that scholars do not inadvertently obscure the complexities inherent in this field of research. With this in mind, our perspective paper illustrates the uniqueness of these concepts, with particular focus on energy democracy. While energy justice has arisen as a valuable academic framework for assessing critical energy issues, we differentiate energy democracy as both a critique of dominant approaches to energy transitions and the offering of an alternative vision involving the reconfiguration of social relations in energy systems. We argue that without understanding the broader struggles in which energy democracy is embedded, it may otherwise be difficult to understand why its distinctiveness matters. Our paper therefore situates energy democracy within broader struggles to prefigure a democratic economy. Further, we argue that critical engagement with these broader social movements and their associated literatures may position energy researchers to better wrestle with challenges facing energy democracy and energy transitions, including systemic power imbalances, Western biases in equity-related frameworks, and the structural barriers inherent in existing economic systems.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.068 | 0.038 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.063 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.019 | 0.042 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.021 |
| Research integrity | 0.011 | 0.019 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".