The EU advances consumer empowerment as one of the pillars of energy legislation, aiming to transfer ownership of the energy transition to citizens. Rights and instruments have been introduced that offer citizens new ways of engaging with energy. However, EU energy legislation lacks a clear conceptual understanding of empowerment, which is required for crafting fit-for-purpose policy measures. We aim to provide a structured overview of current articulations of consumer empowerment in EU energy law by conducting a legislative analysis. To this end, we introduce a framework based on sustainability transitions theory that conceptualises empowerment according to four dimensions: 1) as identity-oriented or centred around resource-mobilisation, 2) more focused on autonomy or power-shift, 3) addressing the general public or specifically marginalised groups within society, and 4) more passive or more active. Application of the framework shows that EU energy legislation recognises consumer empowerment covering all four dimensions, and confirms the legislation’s ambition to provide a comprehensive empowerment agenda for citizens. Nonetheless, our findings also reveal limited reflection on the conceptual implications of such a broad empowerment agenda and the challenge of maintaining policies consistently. By drawing on insights from sustainability transitions we hope to encourage policy makers to strengthen conceptual clarity about the potential role and limitations of consumer empowerment in EU energy legislation. Conversely, we aim to raise awareness among transition scholars of the impacts of legislation on empowerment of actors in the energy transition by connecting legal and sustainability transition perspectives.
Biomass pretreatment represents a key step for overcoming structural recalcitrance and enhancing saccharification towards biofuel and bioenergy production, but is currently limited by high-cost and non-recyclable material streams. This study presents a full-chain strategy that couples biomass pretreatment, enzymatic hydrolysis and microbial fermentation to produce sugars and value-added lipids, so as to maximise resource efficiency. Crude glycerol, a biodiesel byproduct, was employed not only as a pretreatment medium but also as an integral component in downstream co-valorisation. Microwave pretreatment of sugarcane bagassein crude glycerol enabled a remarkable lignin removal from 29.2% to 15.3% and boosted subsequent enzymatic glucose yield from 7.8% to 75.7%. Moreover, glycerol recovered from the pretreatment liquor served as an effective fermentable carbon source, enabling a lipid yield of 3.7 g/L byCryptococcus curvatus, which significantly outperformed pure glycerol. This work establishes an integrated framework to synergisticallyconvert two types of agro-wastes into multiple products for high-efficiency and low-cost biorefineries.
A comparison of Precambrian striate, discoid acritarchs with Circulisporites parvus de Jersey originally described from the Triassic of Queensland, significantly expands the stratigraphic distribution of a morphotype previously shown to be aligned with cysts of species belonging to the Euglenophyceae. These organic walled microfossils (owms) are described systematically and placed into three species of Ouroboros gen. nov.: O. soroboruo gen. et sp. nov., O. vulgaris gen et sp. nov. and O. torus gen. et sp. nov. These species are widespread in the 1078 Ma Nonesuch Formation in the United States with minor occurrences in the Torridonian Sequence of northwest Scotland. These microfossil cysts were originally buried in the bottom sediments of a rift valley lake, and they share a common ecology with modern freshwater euglenids, including an association with cyanobacteria. As a member of the Discobid clade, the euglenids are positioned close to the base of the eukaryote tree in some molecular phylogenetic studies, so their occurrence as documented here would appear to support models of earlier rather than later Neoproterozoic diversification of eukaryote lineages. Ouroboros gen. nov. becomes one of only a handful of examples of Precambrian owms that have found a place in crown group eukaryotic lineages.
Wind energy is indispensable for achieving European climate targets, yet local resistance continues to delay or block projects. Financial participation and compensation (FPC) schemes are increasingly used to foster local acceptance by redistributing economic benefits to affected communities. While these schemes were initially implemented voluntarily by developers, an increasing number of countries and regions have incorporated them into binding legislation. Existing research suggests that FPC schemes can enhance local acceptance when designed in ways that increase perceived distributive, recognitional and procedural justice. To date, no systematic mapping and assessment of these schemes exists. Such an assessment is, however, essential to identify design blind spots, provide an empirical basis for EU-wide recommendations, and support future research on acceptance. We address this gap by providing a public dataset of regulatory and policy documents adopted in the EU27, Norway, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom between 2006 and 2025. We classify the schemes into four types for systematic comparison: fixed-payment compensation, profit-based compensation, debt-based participation, and equity-based participation. The analysis reveals a clear tendency towards fixed-payment compensation schemes, typically in the form of monetary transfers to host municipalities and local residents. In addition, we assess the schemes through an energy justice framework and contrast the findings with insights from the existing literature. Many schemes leave important justice dimensions underdeveloped, particularly recognitional justice aspects. While the paper focuses on onshore wind, the findings offer transferable insights for other infrastructure projects facing social acceptance challenges, such as large-scale solar photovoltaics, transmission grids or data centres.
Decarbonization is an omnipresent term in academic and policy circles, yet its meaning remains elusive and mostly understood as a technocentric process. While many studies focus on the formal content and underlying political processes of climate and energy policies, they often overlook the narratives that governments present to their constituencies about decarbonization. This matters because these narratives directly contribute to shaping national decarbonization processes in the short- and long-term. This article addresses this gap by examining how national governments narrate the uptake of solar and wind energy in three major CO2 emitters – Germany, India, and Mexico. Using thematic analysis of national climate and energy policy documents from 2015 to 2023, the study identifies key rationales, enablers, challenges, and actors presented in these documents. The results show that techno-economic and political narratives are comparatively consistent across the countries, while social and environmental narratives vary considerably depending on the context. Overall, the article shows how narrative pluralism on decarbonization reflects varying socio-economic priorities across and within jurisdictions.
