Beyond public acceptance: Towards systemic societal responsiveness of net zero infrastructures

Whilst dominant science-policy framings focus on getting publics to accept widespread infrastructural changes deemed necessary for net zero, social science scholarship has argued for the need to move ‘beyond acceptance’. In this paper we advance on existing studies which tend to emphasise a largely sequential progression from acceptance to ‘beyond acceptance’ approaches. We suggest that this can be more accurately viewed as distinct co-existing and interacting perspectives on public responses to net zero infrastructures. We present a framework that identifies four perspectives on how publics relate to infrastructural change. This suggests that alongside perspectives focusing on public acceptance and societal acceptability, two alternative perspectives emphasise the need for societal responsiveness perspectives, one with reference to specific settings and one more systemically. Drawing on a review of academic literature and UK policy documents, we move beyond studies focusing on discrete technologies to analyse how these perspectives are evident across the energy system, with reference to three exemplifying case study areas: wind energy, greenhouse gas removal, and smart home technologies. Our analysis shows that public responses to net zero infrastructures are contingent on particular sociotechnical situations and are interrelated across wider systems. While societal responsiveness perspectives are emerging in contestation to the still dominant focus of gaining acceptance, we suggest that a more systemic perspective on societal responsiveness of net zero infrastructures is needed. We consider the research and policy-practice implications of this systemic societal responsiveness perspective in terms of public responses to, engagement with, and the governance of net zero transitions.