High modernism, the dominant sociotechnical imagination in postwar Taiwan, manifested itself in tacit answers to the questions of what a better society would look like, and the most pragmatic and viable approach to make the particular dreamed-of future become reality. This paper explores the exclusion of alternative energy futures brought about by a high modernist imaginary. This imaginary underlies a strategy of emphasizing shortage at present and prosperity in the future-as long as the current shortage is solved in a reliable way. Focusing on the contention over energy supply between 2011 and 2015, this paper provides an analysis of how power shortage is presented in discursive ambiguity, how the claimed crisis over electricity shortage moves to the centre of public debate via the institutional practices of power rationing, and how its public authority is established through collective witness. Renewable energy is continually represented as an 'immature' and 'unviable' technology when it comes to satisfying the nation's need, through particular routinised practices in the calculation of 'reserve margins' in electricity planning and the collective witnessing of (limited) 'operating reserves'. We argue that both of these come with their own assumptions and political implications and, therefore, invite scrutiny.

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This Translations contribution synthesises critical environmental social science research produced in Taiwan and published largely in Chinese. Taiwan is distinctive in east Asia in that it has had, over several decades, a relatively large and prolific community of scholars engaged with environmental justice and sustainability. This research tradition is linked to the emergence of grassroots environmentalism in response to environmental issues faced during Taiwan's rapid industrialisation, and to the democratisation of Taiwanese society from the 1980s onwards. Fuller

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