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Towards Shaping Inclusive Hydrogen Futures: Digital Engagements for  Just Energy Transitions

By Mela Bettega and Clara Crivellaro



As the world moves toward net-zero futures, the role of hydrogen in the energy transition is still being explored, with its long-term impact in different fields of application yet to be fully determined. However, ensuring that hydrogen integration is effective, just, and inclusive requires more than technological research and advancement. It demands meaningful engagement with diverse stakeholders, including energy citizens and consumers, as to ensure socially responsible trajectories of Hydrogen integration.  The need for, and importance of, public engagement is increasingly recognized at the policy level. The UK Government is set to release the first ever Public Participation Strategy on Net Zero in 2025 as recently announced by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DENZ). This strategy will define ways in which businesses and civil society can come together to inform policy-making. This will include specific mechanisms to engage local communities and more vulnerable groups, with a particular focus on people with disabilities. This reflects a growing recognition that inclusivity in decision-making is not only beneficial but essential achieve just and prosperous transitions that can work for everyone.



The Role of Stakeholder Engagement



Stakeholders’ engagement can often be viewed as a way to foster acceptance of new technological innovations. However, it holds far greater potential. An inclusive and place-based approach to engagement can effectively bring together diverse voices to articulate how potential impacts and risks might be ‘lived and felt’ in diverse communities and guide the co-development of pathways to ensure a fair distribution of benefits and burdens in transition processes. A just transition approach  to decarbonisation recognizes that achieving a low-carbon economy should go hand in hand with equitable participation and recognition of diverse expertise in decision-making. This means actively involving affected communities in decision-making, develop pathways to address potential socio-economic disruptions, and ensuring that hydrogen initiatives align with public values and broader sustainability and justice goals.

At HI-ACT, we are exploring how just transitions approaches can inform the design of digital tools to help foster and scale inclusive engagements and collaborations, and democratize discussions on the appropriate place of Hydrogen in ongoing energy transitions.



The Importance of Future Thinking and Future Literacy



Building capacities to engage with complex future scenarios is crucial for shaping just energy transitions. Future thinking and future literacy is the ability to consider possible futures to inform present actions and decisions. These can help people better prepare for change, foster resilience, and co-create new solutions. Future methodologies enable stakeholders to actively participate in envisioning and co-creating pathways for change. Yet, scenarios and traditional forecasting methods often require domain expertise and can present barriers to wider public participation. Furthermore, some forecasting methods that rely on quantitative data, while useful, can present limitations: extrapolating from past trends, they can reduce complexities characterising socio-technical systems.

To address these challenges, alternative approaches to foster inclusive and democratic engagements with futures have been developed. These approaches can unlock people’s imagination by acknowledging that multiple futures are possible and that these do not have to be strictly determined by current dominant techno-economic trajectories and actors.  Methodologies rooted in this approach can foster creativity, agency, and inclusivity in decision-making. For instance, methodologies such as “world-building” allows stakeholders to collaboratively construct detailed and immersive future scenarios, while “backcasting” enables them to define a desirable future and work backward to determine the necessary steps to achieve it. By integrating such participatory approaches, explorations of hydrogen integration in energy transitions can be articulated to reflect the needs, values and aspirations of a diverse range of stakeholders and communities.



Digital Democratic Innovations for Inclusive Future Thinking and Policy-Making



The rapid pace of change in the energy sector means that communities, businesses, and policymakers must work together to develop solutions that are both viable and equitable.

Digital platforms provide a unique opportunity to multiply this creative effort and scale face-to-face engagements traditionally used to engage communities and small stakeholders in deliberation processes. this can also widen participation beyond traditional players  that are typically called to inform decisions shaping important infrastructural changes.

Capabilities of digital tools and environments bring new opportunities to both scaffold conversations about Hydrogen integration in energy futures that may be difficult to achieve in a face-to-face setting. For instance, data visualisation techniques can be used to help participants engage with potential impacts and trade-offs stemming from  hydrogen production and use within a specific locality and socio-technical scenario.  Artificial Intelligence (AI) can also be leveraged to synthesize online discussions and highlight key challenges and concerns to inform decision-making.

Digital engagements tools have already been used in a variety of contexts to democratise decision-making and policy and build future literacy. These digital tools and platforms have enabled inclusive engagements in democratic debate in a variety of ways:






These platforms demonstrate how digital tools can be leveraged to scale participatory and inclusive policymaking, gathering distributed insights and perspectives and improving transparency.

At HI-ACT, we are building on the legacy of these digital democratic innovations to ensure that the perspectives of a wider range of stakeholders can be included to develop place-responsive policy and responsible infrastructural investments. We believe such digital tools can be integrated and used in Local Area Energy Plans (LAEP) where stakeholders input can transparently inform decarbonation actions and efforts.



Challenges and Considerations

Despite the opportunities of digital engagements, challenges remain. The existence of a digital platform does not guarantee equity in participation. Several broader factors must be considered to ensure meaningful digital engagements.




In our current work we have identified further challenges and opportunities that are specific to the topic of Hydrogen and that must be considered to enable constructive digital engagements.



Hydrogen’s relevance in the short and long-term. Hydrogen’s integration in energy systems requires major investments and remains less developed and established compared to other low carbon energy sources. As a result, some stakeholders may not perceive it as relevant to their current domain-specific transitions practices and near-future plans. This is compounded by hydrogen periodically gaining (and loosing) public attention. These factors may make it difficult to engage stakeholders, especially in the absence of imminent use or adoption in a specific locale and domain.



Addressing these issues requires appropriate crafting of narratives framing digital engagements to explore socio-economic and ecological impacts, where Hydrogen might be part of a suite of possible technologies for decarbonisation; or where engaging with the complexity of Hydrogen integration in future energy system might present an opportunity to re-think for example policies, the role of workers, the (re)distribution of burdens in transitions processes.



Still, discussions on hydrogen’s role in energy transition may fail to directly address immediate concerns of some stakeholders’ groups, such as people living in fuel-poor households. In such cases, it is critical to carefully consider the ethical implications of eliciting participation from vulnerable populations by considering benefits and burdens that may stem from engagements outweigh the risks; framing engagement around their most pressing concerns; or seek to engage third-sector organizations able to represent the concerns of fuel-poor households.



Addressing Knowledge Gaps. Not all stakeholders hold the same level of knowledge and understanding of energy infrastructure and hydrogen. Some may also have misconceptions about hydrogen’s safety and the variety of processes at play for its production.  This can create power imbalances – making it more difficult for non-domain experts to voice their concerns and enter in constructive dialogue. To facilitate meaningful discussion, it is crucial to establish a shared baseline of knowledge. This can be achieved through the production and incorporation of concise and accessible educational materials within digital platforms used for digital engagements.



Addressing these concerns requires thoughtful design that can also foster critical interpretation of data stemming from engagements. Policymakers and researchers must account for blind spots and biases that may arise in digital discussions.



Conclusion



Engaging with the question of whether Hydrogen should propel our energy transition and how, is a collective endeavour that necessitates broad participation and inclusive decision-making. Through HI-ACT’s research, we are designing and developing novel methods and digital tools to enable more participatory, equitable, and inclusive discussions on pathways to net-zero. By leveraging future methods and digital democratic innovations, we can work towards creating the conditions for a more democratic and just transition for all.