Abstract Summary
With advances in technology and economic throughput, solar energy has become a key element in the urban energy transition. However, there are widespread inequalities in solar energy adoption which is aided by disproportionate government efforts to increase the overall installed capacity. To redress the neglect of energy justice considerations, we adopt an equity perspective to analyse an ongoing solar energy transition process in the city of The Hague, The Netherlands. Accessibility to solar energy is at the core of our research, encapsulating factors that influence the ability of a household to adopt solar energy. Through a socio-spatial analysis at the postcode level, we identify four distinct social groups with varying levels of access to solar energy. Our results show that these groups are not only strongly segregated across the city but also overlap with existing socio-spatial inequalities. Next, we compare the current solar adoption rates and technical rooftop energy potential across the four social groups with disparate access levels. Results show that decreasing levels of access to solar energy align with lower and unequal adoption rates, revealing that current policies fail to provide equitable access to solar energy. Furthermore, we show that most of the technical potential available in The Hague is in areas where access to solar energy is limited, representing opportunities to exploit a significant amount of untapped technical potential while addressing existing socio-spatial inequalities. Using our concept of accessibility, we identify two groups of interest and related leverage points for future policy interventions to address equity in the transition to solar energy in The Hague, and other cities in The Netherlands.
