Reconfiguring Energy for Social Equity

A group of researchers visiting a solar park in India
ReSET researchers visiting the Pavagada Solar Park, the world’s third biggest renewable energy project. (Megan Davies, 2024)

The ReSET project investigates how the transition from fossil to renewable energy can become aligned with the goals for a more just, democratic and human world. The four-year project is a collaboration between the Urban Futures Studio at Utrecht University (the Netherlands), the Centre for Sustainability Transitions (CST) at Stellenbosch University (South Africa), the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (India) and the Institute of Environmental Social Sciences and Geography at Freiburg University (Germany). This collaboration is a response to the observation that the transition from fossil to renewable energy in many countries often reproduces unequal and unjust relations, sometimes even creating new ones. A new video-based website makes this international research accessible to scientists and non-scientists.

News

Doing this research now is crucial to us because of the growing size of investments in renewables. If societies can reorient these flows of investments towards more desirable outcomes, the energy transition may become a vehicle for a more just, democratic and humane world. Because of the urgency of this matter, we do not just focus on what justice in transitions entails, but also how in practice more just outcomes can be realised in different global contexts. We also have shared our findings with diverse societal actors, including Development Finance Institutes (DFIs), national governments, municipalities, and other influential parties.

A transformative research approach

Within ReSET we apply a transformative research approach. Meaning that we not just study change, but also actively to influence real world contexts to foster more just and sustainable futures. As a part of this we look for new, more effective and engaging ways to communicate our research to different audiences around the world. Together with the creative collective fORMATS aND mECHANISMS we have developed an innovative experimental website that aims to bring the human, lived contexts of our studies digitally alive. At the current website we introduce the team and our mission; it enables visitors to compare case studies; and it introduces our conceptual language through a lexicon and animation of our theoretical framework. In the future we hope to grow this website into a much more interactive learning platform.

Publications

Triple Re Framework

One of the key outputs of the ReSET project is a framework and method for defining how actors can act for more just transitions, including the type of actions people do not immediately think of. We call this framework the Triple Re Framework. The framework is explained and animated in detail at the new ReSET website: resetframework.org/framework (click 'play' in the lower right corner)

Triple Re graph with arrows between a blue circle 'Re-imagining', a green square 'Re-Configuring', and a purple triangle 'Re-coding'
Triple Re framework

Research team