Achieving Fairness in Energy Systems: Economic and Societal Perspectives

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Background

Concerns about how fair the energy transition is to various persons and groups are receiving more and more attention as time goes on. While the energy transition necessitates new criteria for assessing energy systems and policies, it also imposes new standards for assessing and overseeing the equity of those systems and policies.

A good body of energy research is currently dealing with technologies, renewables, distributed resources, and how economic benefits can be achieved for different stakeholders. However, the "fairness" of such systems required to cover the objectives of a wide variety of players participating in those has received much less attention. In fact, the topic of “fairness” can be addressed from different perspectives, namely profit sharing, energy vulnerability, energy democracy, or public acceptance. Also, the intersection of such dimensions is commonly neglected or sometimes misunderstood, so efforts in the field to achieve reliable indicators of fairness are needed.

The current global situation shows rising inequality in different axis of society (e.g., social, environmental, and economic). Thus, at least in the energy field, greater attention is required to design systems that are “fair” for a wide variety of stakeholders and end-users. The goal of this Research Topic Issue is to open a space for specialized and critical discussion on energy studies that address fairness from different perspectives and technologies. This is a topic recognized as key in the design of distributed energy systems, and despite the attention it is currently attracting, it has not been broadly explored yet. With this Research Topic, we aim to provide a forum to explore fairness in different energy systems contexts and levels.

We encourage researchers and academics on the supply and demand sides to submit studies in short- and long-term planning, management, and operation of energy systems considering fairness from different perspectives and criteria in an attempt to understand when and where ethical energy questions arise, who should be involved in their resolution, and ultimately which solutions must be pursued to achieve a sustainable and fair power energy grid.

The scope of this Research Topic covers, but is not limited, to:

• Energy communities and energy sharing
• Key performance indicators for fairness
• Peer-to-peer markets
• Cooperative and competitive game theory approaches for electricity markets
• Game-theoretic concepts for energy sharing
• Distributed systems and demand-side management
• Tariff design and billing process in energy communities
• Multi-objective optimization considering fairness
• Fairness in systems with flexible resources
• Ownership of distributed resources and their impact on management systems
• Fairness approaches from non-economic perspectives (e.g., social or environmental)
• Policies and criteria for assessing fair energy systems
• Incentives and remuneration strategies in energy communities and local markets

Keywords: Distributed energy resources, Electric vehicles, Electricity markets, Energy communities, Energy democracy, Energy systems, Energy transition, Fairness, Game theory, Local electricity markets, Optimization, Peer to peer (P2P), Renewable resources

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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