France – Just Transition Initiative

Summary

The authors examine France’s efforts to improve its approach to industrial risk management to promote fairness and resilience. The authors describe the traditional technocratic approach to managing industrial risk, contrasting it to the new legal framework—the Technological Risk Prevention Plan (PPRT)—introduced following a 2001 chemical plant explosion in Toulouse. This approach seeks to impose safety zones around industrial areas based on experts’ opinions and input from residents, bringing new voices into risk management.

The authors evaluate the implementation of this new legal framework in the industrial area of Dunkirk, discussing challenges due to technical complexities, competing interests, and inadequate consultation processes. They outline subsequent adjustments to local legislation to complement the PPRT and ultimately conclude that, while there are some failures, the process has encouraged fairer governance dynamics and local resilience.

Summary

This academic paper investigates citizens’ perceptions of the energy transition and the kinds of roles they see themselves playing in its implementation. Through a series of cross-sectional community engagements and other research tools, the authors seek to describe how local communities can become empowered to drive project development and engage meaningfully in the low-carbon energy transition.

The authors examined six communities in five European countries. Participants felt that, as citizens, they had limited agency to participate in energy system reforms and that, as energy consumers, they were locked into a restricted set of false choices that do not grant them meaningful power.

The authors call for energy governance structures and organizational formats that are participatory, inclusive, and mindful of the lived experiences of local people. They offer a “characterization tool” to help communities assess the potential for energy democracy and citizen participation within six different types of participatory business models. They also offer recommendations for how these models can incorporate citizens’ perspectives into planning and implementation, using examples to illustrate how considering a broader range of stakeholder perspectives can promote more equitable energy configurations.