Editorial: Energy transitions in times of crisis: A social science perspective: Special Issue on Governance, Justice, Energy Security, and Decentralization in Europe's Energy Transitions

This special issue of Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews examines the social and policy dimensions of Europe’s energy transitions under conditions of crisis and accelerated change. The collection foregrounds how governance, justice, energy security, and decentralization co-evolve with the rapid deployment of renewables, electrification, and emerging vectors such as green hydrogen. The articles address the politics of electricity price regulation in EU member states during recent turmoil; public acceptance of green hydrogen in Germany; the legal-ecological redesign of ground-mounted solar along transport corridors; intermediary roles and implementation dynamics in Germany’s electric-vehicle policy mix; determinants of energy poverty across the European Union; the geoeconomics of hydrogen standards, certification, and trade; practice-based lessons for meaningful participation in energy projects; and survey evidence on how citizens in Germany and Switzerland weigh energy security against climate mitigation. Together, these contributions connect EU-level market design and shifts in external dependencies with regional siting, municipal planning, and household-level perceptions, using mixed methods that include high-resolution spatial analysis, comparative policy analysis, and large-N surveys. Collectively, the contributions provide a comparative evidence base and conceptual scaffolding for social science energy research, clarifying how governance architectures, justice claims, and security imperatives shape deployment, consent, and system performance. They supply transferable methods, identify testable propositions, and surface datasets for longitudinal analysis, establishing a reference point for subsequent inquiry into the dynamics of rapid, socially robust energy transitions in Europe.