Renewable energy Living Labs through the lenses of responsible innovation: building an inclusive, reflexive, and sustainable energy transition

Responsible Innovation (RI) offers Sustainability Transitions (ST) research methodologies a pathway to enable more inclusive, responsive, and sustainable transitions. Specifically, Living Labs (LLs) can benefit from RI scholarship in the scope of their sustainability research designs, as they may thereby be able to better foster critical thinking, inclusivity, and reflexivity. Drawing on a review of LLs literature and the self-reported assessments of researchers, experts and stakeholders involved in 12 LLs experiences, this research article sets out to explore how RI dimensions might serve to advance the practice of LLs in the context of ST research. The 12 LLs from seven European countries were centred on renewable energy prosumer initiatives. This analysis looks into how stakeholders were identified and involved, what inclusivity issues were addressed and what challenges were identified, to draw key lessons learned for advancing with RI in the scope of transdisciplinary energy transition studies.