prof. dr. G. (Goda) Perlaviciute
Goda Perlaviciute is co-establisher of the Public Participation Centre. The centre brings together researhers from different disciplines working on topics related to public engagement in policy- and decision-making in the fields of enegry and climate.
Goda Perlaviciute is co-director of the Like!Me Living Lab, which is a cooperation between Environmental Psychology and the European Union Law Department at the University of Groningen. The Like!Me Living Lab is a real-life platform for studying effective public participation in climate policy making, in close collaboration with societal partners.
CAPABLE - ClimAte Policy AcceptaBiLity Economic framework
2023-2026
Policies to transform the European economy to meet the global climate targets of the Paris agreement need to be cost-effective, fair, and politically and socially feasible. However, many policies face a tension between ambition and effectiveness on the one hand and social and political feasibility on the other. Furthermore, climate policies often face low acceptance among the general public and business communities. The ambition of CAPABLE is to provide robuts, resilient and actionable recommendations for the design of socially and economically acceptable climate policues for 2030 and beyond.
EC2- Energy Citizenship and Energy Communities for a Clean Energy Transition
2021-2024
Energy citizenship – the active involvement and empowerment of the people in the energy sector – is a cornerstone to achieve a clean-energy transition and to build a low carbon and resilient future in the European Union within the next decades. Energy communities – non-commercial market actors in the energy sector – can help to achieve this goal once their potential is known and acknowledged by the citizens of the EU. Hence, the overarching objective of this proposed research is to scale-up both energy citizenship and energy communities to achieve greater social acceptability and more durable governance arrangements via actionable policy recommendations for policy makers. To this end, we employ a transdisciplinary team of experts to (i) develop a psychological conceptualization to understand what it takes to become an energy citizen, (ii) identify legal and socio-economic market factors that can hinder or promote an emergence of and engagement of citizens in energy communities, (iii) experimentally test and gather quantitative-empirical evidence for these factors, psychological underpinnings, and for the conduciveness of energy citizenship for broader sustainable policy goals, (iv) use insights from the empirical work to foster the co-creation of digital tools with stakeholders to overcome barriers, (v) distill and disseminate the gained knowledge on local, national and EU-level. This project is funded by the European Commision (Horizon 2020).
2020-2024
Renewable energy projects often face public resistance, especially if people feel excluded from the decision making. Public participation early in the decision-making process could lead to more socially acceptable energy projects. However, public participation is currently focused on local energy projects, while important decisions are made at macro level in policy visions, plans, and programmes. This may reduce public influence and fuel public resistance. One solution is to include public participation in macro-level decision making. Yet, little is known about how this can be done and how this would affect the acceptability of energy projects. In this project, we develop a novel, interdisciplinary approach on how to optimise public participation at all levels of decision making to reach more socially acceptable decisions. The project is funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).
Quantifying and Deploying Responsible Negative Emissions in Climate Resilient Pathways (NEGEM)
2020-2024
Besides renewable energy, other solutions are needed for the sustainable energy transition, such as carbon capture and storage. These so-called negative emission technologies remove CO2 from the atmosphere, thereby slowing climate change and its negative impacts. We study public acceptability of these often highly controversial technologies, as part of the EU-funded project “NEGEM”, led by the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. It is a collaborative roject with scholars from other disciplines, including climate scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
Responsible decision-making on gas
2017-2022
The use and production of natural gas is causing controversies, as reflected in debates about the earthquakes in the province of Groningen in the Netherlands, gas production activities at vulnerable locations, shale gas, imports from Russia, and its fossil nature. At the same time, it is advocated that gas can play an important role in the sustainable energy transition and new developments are being introduced in the gas sector, such as green gas and power-to-gas. It is a societal and ethical challenge to determine what role, if any, gas can play in the (future) energy system. Environemntal psychologists at the RUG and political scientists and philosophers at the Delft University of Technology work together in this project. The project will provide insights for responsible decisions about what role, if any, different gas concepts should play in future energy systems.
Developing socially responsible innovations: The role of values and moral emotions
2016-2020
This project studies the role of emotions and underlying values and moral considerations in public responses towards innovations. The project aims to develop an innovative emotion-based design perspective for socially responsible innovations that are acceptable and justifiable on ethical grounds.
2015-2020
This project aims to examine people’s opinion about gas production in the province of Groningen, including perceptions and evaluations of risks and benefits of gas production, and trust in gas production companies and local and national governments. The project is funded by the Dutch gas production company NAM.
Acceptability of and possibilities for implementation of sustainable energy projects (finished)
In 2020, 14% of total energy in the Netherlands should come from renewable energy sources. This requires development and implementation of diverse (new) renewable energy projects for delivering electricity as well as heat. To realise sustainable energy transition, it is important to understand which key factors influence public acceptability of sustainable energy projects and how these factors should be addressed in responsible decision-making. These questions are addressed in this project, in collaboration with the provinces of Groningen, Drenthe, and Friesland, and the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs.
Pilot Kennisplatform Windenergie (Pilot Knowledge Platform on Wind Energy) (finished)
An initiative to bring together different perspectives and concerns regarding wind energy developments. The (pilot) knowledge platform represents various parties involved with wind energy developments (i.e. residents and their interest groups, businesses, regulatory institutes and the government, and knowledge and research institutes). Key goals include collecting knowledge and providing a discussion platform for the different parties.
Acceptability of gas in future energy systems (finished)
This project aims to study factors influencing the acceptability of gas in future energy systems. Among others, we consider the perceived advantages and disadvantages of gas now and in the future, and trust in gas production companies. The project is funded by the Topconsortia Knowledge and Innovation Gas (in Dutch: Topconsortia voor Kennis en Innovatie Gas) and Gasunie, the Netherlands.
Creating Innovative Sustainability Pathways - CRISP (finished)
CRISP seeks to identify potential pathways that will aid the EU towards the transition to a sustainable, low carbon Europe. To meet this challenge, CRISP reviews current policies and practical case studies to figure out where we are at the moment. We then plan to develop and evaluate alternative scenarios for the future so that we then can find ways in which we can bridge the gap between where we are today, and where specifically we want to be in the future. A key feature of CRISP is the involvement and participation with school pupils, as well as experts and individuals, companies and governments. We are funded by FP7, the European Union Framework 7 research programme and are a team of partners from Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway and UK.
| Laatst gewijzigd: | 13 juni 2023 12:27 |