Social sustainability: making energy transitions fair to the people

Abstract One of the greatest challenges on the path toward a sustainable society is the question of how to achieve the necessary broad acceptance and active participation of all sections of society. This chapter shows how an application-oriented concept of social sustainability can contribute to creating the knowledge base that is needed to meet this challenge. To this end, social sustainability will be developed as a specific research perspective with regard to a concrete socio-ecological transformation process. On this basis, it will be possible to create an empirical research design for monitoring the social dimensions of energy transformations in Germany and beyond. By making use of this concept, existing research gaps can be closed, and orientation, system, and action knowledge can be provided to support the further shaping of the energy system transformation in the sense of transformative and transdisciplinary research.