Technocracy in transition: enhancing stakeholder inclusion in Denmark's energy planning

The objective of this paper is to examine citizen and stakeholder inclusion in long-term energy planning. It focuses on extended planning horizons up to 2050 in Denmark. Based on in-depth interviews with expert stakeholders and analysis of policy processes surrounding long-term energy decarbonization scenarios, it examines how diverse stakeholders are included in the development of the Danish Energy Agency's technology catalogues, which forecast detailed techno-economic data across various energy technologies and infrastructures until 2050.

Three research questions are addressed:
1) What concepts and methods exist in the state-of-the-art for democratic participation of citizens and stakeholders in long-term energy planning and what are the key limitations of these approaches?
2) What methodological strategies can be used to expand the definition and inclusion of stakeholders in long-term energy planning?
3) How can the impacts of citizen and stakeholder inclusion in long-term energy planning be assessed and improved?

The research generates new empirical and conceptual knowledge on the study of technocratic policymaking, the concept of a stakeholder, the configuration of new knowledge infrastructures and platforms that are scaled up to share forecasted energy data, and the inclusion of citizens in complex forecasting of sustainability transitions during several next decades.