Concepts of trust in energy transition

The development of renewable energy infrastructure, and adoption of climate neutral policies have been met with major issues of social acceptance. There is a large body of research on the drivers and factors influencing social acceptance in energy transition, often resting on a common challenge of trust-building. Indeed ‘Trust’ has been a commonly highlighted as a crucial factor in energy transition (Rayner 2010, Greenberg 2014) and deployed to help understand impact of different technologies (Otto et al 2023), knowledge (Żywiołek, at al 2022), participation (Dwyer and Bidwell 2019, Klkbrenner and Roosen 2016), perception of risk (Ricci et al 2010) and public policy (Fast and Mabe 205). This is set within a wider context that suggests there has been a steady long-term decline of trust in public institutions (e.g. Foster ad Freiden, 2017) leading to the increase of populism (‘drain the swamp’) and what has been termed a ‘crisis in trust’, at a time where the climate crisis demands clear political leadership and strong collective action.

Despite this, the recent review by Otto et al (2023) found that the concept of trust is usually under-theorized and treated instrumentally and uncritically in energy transition research. The paper seeks to address this problem by develop more tangible and robust concepts of trust that can be used to operationalize research in trust and facilitate richer comparative studies from which broad insights for policy and practice can be developed. To do this the paper will do three things: First it will develop a foundational understanding of the different types of trust (particularly drawing on Korczynski 2000); the paper will then use this typology to review existing research on trust in energy transition to explore how trust has been examined through different relationships (i.e. ’trust’ in or between actors, institutions, processes, and knowledge), different energy technologies and in broader socio-political contexts of energy transition; Finally, this analysis will be used to highlight key research gaps and priorities for future research, contributing to a research agenda for trust in energy transition.