CAREsolar is based at the University Institute of Lisbon's (ISCTE-IUL) Centre for Psychological Research and Social Intervention (CIS) and funded by the Swiss Research Foundation for Electricity and Mobile Communication. Its main aim is to create an updated framework on the community acceptance of renewable energy infrastructures that can help inform solar energy transitions that are socially equitable, environmentally sustainable, and widely accepted by local communities.
To achieve this, the project will undertake the following steps:
Conduct an updated literature review on community acceptance of renewable energy and associated infrastructures, incorporating the most recent conceptual frameworks and best practices. This review will also empirically validate these frameworks and highlight success stories, with a particular focus on solar energy as a growing and vital component of the renewable energy transition.
Propose an integrated conceptual framework, which will be refined through discussions with leading experts and key stakeholders. This process will include a full-day workshop at the Swiss Research Foundation for Electricity and Mobile Communication/ETH Zurich.
Deliver a handbook with guidelines for policymakers, energy companies, and local communities on best practices for fostering community acceptance of renewable energy and associated infrastructures, particularly solar energy.
Who We Are
-
Susana Batel
Susana is an Assistant Researcher and Lecturer at the Center for Psychological Research and Social Intervention of ISCTE - University Institute of Lisbon. She has a PhD in Social, Community and Environmental Psychology from ISCTE (2010), and has since been examining the relationship between people, the territory and the climate crisis, specifically around energy transformations towards carbon neutrality, and related socio-environmental justice and political participation issues, based on a critical interdisciplinary perspective. She is Co-Editor of the journal Papers on Social Representations and has published in journals like the Journal of Environmental Psychology, Energy Policy, Energy Research & Social Science and the Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology. She has also been the PI and local coordinator of several international and national funded projects, including the recently finished JUSTENERGY - Intersections of right-wing populism and (un)just rural energy transitions in Portugal as communicative and socio-spatial practices, funded by the Portuguese Science Foundation.
-
Ross Wallace
Ross is a researcher at the Center for Psychological Research and Social Intervention of ISCTE - University Institute of Lisbon. His recently completed doctoral project critically examined how imaginaries of the energy future have informed the institutionalisation and realisation of Renewable Energy Communities in Portugal. Originally from Scotland, he obtained a bachelor’s degree in sociology and philosophy from Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. His master’s thesis in social research at the University of Edinburgh examined the circular economy in the coffee industry and the complex coordination of values, practices and wastes.