The transition to a more sustainable personal transportation sector requires the widespread adoption of electric vehicles. However, a dominant design has not yet emerged and a standards battle is being fought between battery and hydrogen fuel cell powered electric vehicles. The aim of this paper is to analyze which factors are most likely to influence the outcome of this battle, thereby reducing the uncertainty in the industry regarding investment decisions in either of these technologies. We examine the relevant factors for standard dominance and apply a multi-criteria decision-making method, best worst method, to determine the relative importance of these factors. The results indicate that the key factors include technological superiority, compatibility, and brand reputation and credibility. Our findings show that battery powered electric vehicles have a greater chance of winning the standards battle. This study contributes to theory by providing further empirical evidence that the outcome of standards battles can be explained and predicted by applying factors for standard success. We conclude that technology dominance in the automotive industry is mostly driven by technological characteristics and characteristics of the format supporter.

Smart grid technologies are considered an important enabler in the transition to more sustainable energy systems because they support the integration of rising shares of volatile renewable energy sources into electricity networks. To implement them in a large scale, broad acceptance in societies is crucial. However, a growing body of research has revealed societal concerns with these technologies. To achieve sustainable energy systems, such concerns should be taken into account in the development of smart grid technologies. In this paper, we show that many concerns are related to moral values such as privacy, justice, or trust. We explore the effect of moral values on the acceptance of smart grid technologies. The results of our systematic literature review indicate that moral values can be both driving forces and barriers for smart grid acceptance. We propose that future research striving to understand the role of moral values as factors for social acceptance can benefit from an interdisciplinary approach bridging literature in ethics of technology with technology acceptance models.

The current transition towards low-carbon energy systems does not only involve changes in technologies but is also shaped by changes in the rules and regulations (i.e., the institutions) that govern energy systems. Institutional change can be influenced by changes in core values—normative principles such as affordability, security of supply, and sustainability. Analyzing this influence, however, has been hindered by the absence of a structured framework that highlights the role of values in institutional change processes. This paper presents an interdisciplinary framework explicating how values influence institutional change in the case of the energy transition. We build on a dynamic framework for institutional change that combines the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework with the concept of social learning. This basic analytical framework is expanded by conceptualizations of values in moral philosophy, institutional economics, and social psychology. Our framework offers researchers and policy makers an analytical tool to identify how values are embedded in infrastructure and existing regulation and how values shape communities and behavior. It explains how value controversies can trigger social learning processes that eventually can result in structural change. Thus, this framework allows analyzing institutional change over time as well as comparing change patterns across spatial and temporal contexts.

This paper explores how the Capability Approach (CA) can enrich the concept of energy justice by assessing the impact of two cases of digitalisation in the energy sector. Digitalisation promises technical solutions to pressing challenges in the energy sector such as climate change and fossil fuel scarcity. Current academic and popular discussions of these solutions are dominated by a techno-utopian ideal, which sometimes obscures complex ethical and social challenges. Furthermore, technology assessment in the energy sector often focuses on environmental and economic aspects of sustainability, while issues of energy justice or broader ethical concerns are often a low priority. In this paper, we explore whether Nussbaum’s version of the CA can be used as a systematic approach to the assessment of technological options that helps bring energy justice into the spotlight. Drawing on examples from two different areas of the energy system, namely, smart grids for the electricity sector and autonomous vehicles for the mobility sector, we demonstrate that the CA provides a normative framework that allows for aspects of individual deliberation and as such is well suited as a normative metric for the conception of energy justice in social science.

This article introduces Designing for Care (D4C), a distinctive approach to project management and technological design informed by Care Ethics. We propose to conceptualize “care” as both the foundational value of D4C and as its guiding mid-level principle. As a value, care provides moral grounding. As a principle, it equips D4C with moral guidance to enact a caring process. The latter is made of a set of concrete, and often recursive, caring practices. One of the key assumption of D4C is a relational ontology of individual and group identities, which fosters the actualization of caring practices as essentially relational and (often) reciprocal. Moreover, D4C adopts the “ecological turn” in CE and stresses the ecological situatedness and impact of concrete projects, envisioning an extension of caring from intra-species to inter-species relations. We argue that care and caring can influence directly some of the phases and practices within the management of (energy) projects and the design of sociotechnical (energy) artefacts and systems. When issues related to “value change” emerge as problematic (e.g., values trade-offs, conflicts), the mid-level guiding principle of care helps evaluate and prioritize different values at stake within specific projects. Although there may be several actors and stakeholders involved in project management and technological design, here we will focus on the professionals in charge of imagining, designing, and carrying out these processes (i.e., project managers, designers, engineers). We suggest that adopting D4C would improve their ability to capture and assess stakeholders’ values, critically reflect on and evaluate their own values, and judge which values prioritize. Although D4C may be adaptable to different fields and design contexts, we recommend its use especially within small and medium-scale (energy) projects. To show the benefits of adopting it, we envisage the application of D4C within the project management and the technological design of a community battery. The adoption of D4C can have multiple positive effects: transforming the mentality and practice of managing a project and designing technologies; enhancing caring relationships between managers, designers, and users as well as among users; achieving better communication, more inclusive participation, and more just decision-making. This is an initial attempt to articulate the structure and the procedural character of D4C. The application of D4C in a concrete project is needed to assess its actual impact, benefits, and limitations.