Contact Zones in the Energy Transition: A Transdisciplinary Complex Problem

Aleksander Jakimowicz () and Daniel Rzeczkowski
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Aleksander Jakimowicz: Department of Economic Policy, Institute of Economics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Palace of Culture and Science, 1 Defilad Sq., 00-901 Warsaw, Poland
Daniel Rzeczkowski: Department of Market and Consumption, Institute of Economics and Finance, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, 1/327 Cieszyński Sq., 10-720 Olsztyn, Poland

Energies, 2023, vol. 16, issue 8, 1-48

Abstract: The success of energy transition relies on what happens in the contact zone, the area between citizens and municipality governments, which still awaits more thorough research. This article employs the concept of the contact zone both as a theory describing processes of developing energy prosumerism on a local level, and as a research method which enables one to uncover phenomena that are critical to attaining climate objectives. The research field was the Warmia and Mazury Province in Poland, which is the region with the lowest socio-economic potential both in Poland and in the European Union. The analyzed contact zone was divided into two parts: the human administrative legal contact zone and the more-than-human energy contact zone. To describe the relationships occurring in these subzones, the authors used empirical data originating from a survey addressed to citizens living in the above province. The aim was to explore the respondents’ knowledge about current prosumption processes and the opportunities to implement them in the local government sector. Multiple correspondence analysis was used to analyze the data. The main findings were the low knowledge of citizens about prosumption, which was represented by a large number of the prosumption principles not indicated by the respondents, and—on the other hand—the evidence that local communities expect the implementation of digital prosumption, which they know from the market sector, in public administration. It was also demonstrated that the absence of citizens’ involvement in the energy transition is a consequence of two historic colonialisms, German and Russian, which had a huge influence on the emergence of an autocratic management style in the analyzed region. Comparison of the analyzed contact zones with two reference zones showed that grassroots movements in the province are initiated mainly by external factors of a nationwide character. In the Warmia and Mazury contact zones, civic initiatives are in the early stage of development, although they display all features of developed zones, such as autoethnographic gestures, transculturation, struggle, violence, and anti-conquest.

Keywords: digitalization; energy transition; local government sector; virtuous cycle of digitalization; decentralization and electrification; more-than-human energy contact zone; human administrative legal contact zone; autoethnographic texts; transculturation; multiple correspondence analysis; principles of prosumption (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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