Phedeas Stephanides

Contemporary energy and climate change policy focuses on getting society to accept the widespread infrastructural changes deemed necessary for realising net zero. This emphasises approaches such as information provision, financial incentives, compensation and instrumental public engagement to secure public acceptance of predefined transition pathways.

Through a series of collaborative experiments with partner organisations, the Public Engagement Observatory is actively exploring how new approaches to mapping diverse forms of public engagement across systems can make a difference in practice to energy and climate-related decisions, innovations and new forms of participation. This briefing reports on one such experiment that explored how the Observatory’s approach might contribute to new democratic innovations.