A new video-based website makes international research on Just Energy Transitions accessible to scientists and non-scientists. The Reconfiguring Energy for Social Equity (ReSET) project – a collaboration between South African, Indian, German, and Dutch research institutes – is launching an innovative, experimental website to share research findings more effectively and engagingly.
Visitors to the new ReSET website will get an insight into the local realities of different researchers through video and can independently compare case studies from various countries. Users can pause videos to click on concepts in the captions at any time to learn about context-specific meanings. In this way, knowledge about how energy transitions and social justice outcomes can be aligned should become more accessible to civil society organisations, (local) governments, development banks and other interested parties.
Dr Megan Davies, researcher at the Centre for Sustainability Transitions, notes the different approach taken to develop the content and set-up the website, adding that creating a video-based platform provides accessibility to a wider audience, not only academics and researchers.
“The website offers a unique way to hear from ReSET team members, learn about our concepts and frameworks and get to grips with the different case studies. The website features three case studies developed by researchers at the Centre for Sustainability Transitions, that speak to different dimensions of South Africa’s just energy transition – from collaborative governance around utility-scale renewable energy, to municipal financial sustainability, and energy poverty alleviation in cities.
“While the website is relevant for our own context in South Africa, it also features case studies from other contexts, including Germany, India and the Netherlands, and gives a window into how just energy transitions are contested across the global North and South,” said Davies.
A transformative research approach
The ReSET project aims to actively promote social justice in the context of sustainable energy transitions. This research is vital because while investments in renewable energy are growing worldwide, this transition from fossil fuels to renewables often leads to unequal and unjust outcomes for local communities, and society in general. ReSET believes that 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.
Triple Re Framework
After four years of collaboration, the ReSET project is sharing its first findings at www.resetframework.org. This online platform will help researchers as well as professionals working on just energy transitions. Besides academic papers, one of the project’s key outputs is the “Triple Re” framework, a method of analysis for defining how actors can act for more just energy transitions, including the type of actions people do not immediately think of. The framework describes three forms of acts in the energy transition: the reimagining of new energy futures such as visions for community energy, the recoding of laws and policy schemes to make such futures possible, and the reconfiguring of energy infrastructures and practices, which make such new futures a material reality. These tools help professionals implement the ReSET findings in their own practice.
Website development
resetframework.org was developed by the ReSET project and creative collective fORMATS aND mECHANISMS. Scientists used 360 cameras to record case studies in India, South Africa, Germany and the Netherlands. In doing so, this innovative experimental website brings the human, lived contexts of the research alive digitally. The video-based design provides innovative science communication appropriate to an era where visual communication is increasingly central.
The ReSET team
The ‘Reconfiguring Energy for Social Equity’ project is a collaboration between the Urban Futures Studio (Utrecht University), the Centre for Sustainability Transitions (Stellenbosch University), the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, and the Institute of Environmental Social Sciences and Geography (Freiburg University).
This research project is supported by the Volkswagen Stiftung.
