Public Acceptance of Energy Transition Technologies: Theoretical Perspectives

The public acceptance of technologies for the energy transition is a topic that has been debated, especially in recent years, from the second decade of the 2000s until today. The reasons for this interest lie in the need for innovation in the energy supply sector due to the climate and environmental crisis that has become increasingly serious and bursting in the public and political debate. The literature explored relates to social studies, which first deal with the macro-theme of the energy and ecological transitions and then move on to the exploration in the literature of the meaning of the concept of public acceptance, which has been much debated and at the same time little clarified. Also of interest is the association between technological acceptance and risk acceptance, an aspect on which sociology has been questioning itself for a long time: we refer to Beck, Giddens and Luhmann's studies on risk, which are decidedly central to the discipline, but also to the STS strand that has focused heavily on energy technologies. Most of the proposed literature questions the usefulness of public participation processes as a tool for a more transparent acceptance by civil society and as a co-adjuvant instrument of social justice. In conclusion, implementing these practices could be an alternative regarding awareness, collaboration, information, democratisation, and empowerment. However, there needs to be a more precise reference to models that can be used on a large scale in different contexts.