The history of the modern United States is the history of coal—and of coal miners. Trish Kahle reveals miners as forgers of a coal-fired social contract that was contested throughout the twentieth century as Americans sought to define the meaning of citizenship in an energy-intensive democracy. Energy Citizenship traces the uncertain relationship between coal and democracy from the Progressive Era to the election of Ronald Reagan, examining how miners’ democratic aspirations confronted the deadly record of the country’s coal mines. Miners and their communities bore the burdens of energy production while reaping far fewer of the benefits of energy consumption. But they insisted that death in the mines, far from being inevitable, was a political choice. Kahle demonstrates that coal miners’ struggles to democratize the workplace, secure civil and social rights, and obtain restitution for the human toll of progress reshaped U.S. laws, regulatory administrations, and political imaginaries. Energy policy in the twentieth century was about not only managing fuels but also negotiating the relationship between coal miners and the rest of the country, which depended on the electric power and steel produced with the coal they mined. Placing coal miners at the center of a sweeping new history of the United States, this book unmasks the violence of energy systems and shows how energy governance cuts to the heart of persistent questions about democracy, justice, and equality.

The Role of Public Participation in Energy Transitions provides a conceptual and empirical approach to stakeholder and citizen involvement in the ongoing energy transition conversation, focusing on projects surrounding energy conversion and efficiency, reducing energy demand, and using new forms of renewable energy sources. Sections review and contrast different approaches to citizen involvement, discuss the challenges of inclusive participation in complex energy policymaking, and provide conceptual foundations for the empirical case studies that constitute the second part of the book. The book is a valuable resource for academics in the field of energy planning and policymaking, as well as practitioners in energy governance, energy and urban planners and participation specialists. Explains both key concepts in public participation and involvement, along with empirical results gained in implementing these concepts Links theoretical knowledge with conceptual and real-life applications in the energy sector Instructs energy planners in how to improve planning and transformation processes by using inclusive governance methods Contains insights from case studies in the fully transitioned German system that provide an empirical basis for action for energy policymakers worldwide

This open access book is intended to provoke and progress new thinking in the field of energy research for policy makers, practitioners and scholars. By drawing on a broad range of social and innovation theory insights, this book showcases the diversity of energy citizenship and opens up the concept by including multiple ‘latent’, less visible, forms of energy citizenship that also form part of the energy transition. Focusing on how energy citizenship is considered in eight countries across Europe, each of the contributions highlight the empirical variety, the geographical differences, the contextual challenges, and the socio-political histories out of which energy citizenship develops. In exploring if there are certain convergences and similarities across contexts, the collection makes a significant contribution to debates and discussions surrounding the European Energy Union.

This book develops a deeper understanding of what is an increasingly applied term across policy cycles and academic discourses, ‘energy citizenship’. It will provide the reader with five distinct chapters, with each in turn examining a specific aspect of the concept and how it has manifested in public discourses.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Al Gore's summer blockbuster An Inconvenient Truth, and crude oil prices soaring to all-time highs, more people than ever know the truth about our oil addiction. Global warming is here. M. King Hubbert's oil peak is fast approaching (or may already have arrived). The secret's out: fossil fuel reserves are dwindling and popular interest has created the need for accessible, realistic solutions. The Citizen-Powered Energy Handbook, a clear-eyed view of the critical situation we face, offers ways out. Greg Pahl examines energy technologies currently available and homes in on renewable energy strategies that can be adopted by individuals and communities. Such cooperative initiatives have been common in Europe for years and are beginning to gain a foothold in the US. Each chapter focuses on a different renewable energy category--solar, wind, water, biomass, liquid biofuels, and geothermal--then reviews their advantages and disadvantages and desccribes numerous examples of successful, proven local initiatives. The Citizen-Powered Energy Handbook is an eloquent appeal for community and regional action to initiate an array of solutions to energy needs until now controlled by large, distant utilities and consortiums. It is time to take back control of the energy and environmental challenges ahead; this book will help people do just that. It is a handbook for anyone ready to take the first steps towards a more sustainable future.

Energy is multifaceted, and Energy Made Easy allows the reader to grasp enough knowledge quickly so they can participate in discussions with family, friends, co-workers, or while watching news reports. The main purpose of the book is to Help Citizens Become Energy-Literate. As an added benefit to the reader, each chapter is a stand-alone read on twelve energy subjects. The readers may not be interested in the entire spectrum of energy, but can selectively pick, and choose hot energy topics, trending on current news or social media coverage. It is dangerous and delusional to believe anything can be explained in sound bites, much less energy. This book will make you look at energy and electricity in a new, fresh way, and perspective. We believe this is desperately needed with the upcoming U.S. Presidential election, and global events taking place in China, Russia, Iran, Africa, India, and South America.

This open access book examines the role of pilot and demonstration projects as crucial devices for conducting innovation in the context of the energy transition. Bridging literature from sustainability transitions and Science and Technology Studies (STS), it argues that such projects play a crucial role, not only in shaping future energy and mobility systems, but in transforming societies more broadly. Pilot projects constitute socio-technical configurations where imagined future realities are materialized. With this as a backdrop, the book explores pilot projects as political entities, focusing on questions of how they gain their legitimacy, which resources are mobilized in their production, and how they can serve as sites of public participation and the production of energy citizenship. The book argues that such projects too often have a narrow technology focus, and that this is a missed opportunity. The book concludes by critically discussing the potential roles of research and innovation policy in transforming how such projects are configured and conducted.