Mapping diverse visions of energy transitions: co-producing sociotechnical imaginaries

Abstract

The need to rapidly decarbonise energy systems is widely accepted, yet there is growing criticism of 'top-down', technocentric transition visions. Transitions are, such critics claim, unpredictable, contested, and comprise of multiple and competing perspectives. This paper opens up to diverse visions of energy transitions by studying a corpus of 12 visions produced across different 'institutional settings' of the state, business, science and technology, and civil society in the UK. We introduce a new analytical framework grounded in relational co-productionist perspectives in science and technology studies (STS) to comparatively analyse the similarities and differences of the visions in relation to four dimensions of sociotechnical transformation: meanings, knowings, doings, and organisings. Whilst research on energy transitions often focuses on dominant imaginaries within political cultures, regimes and centres of power, it is an explicit intention of this paper to also comparatively map the distributed, diverse and counter-hegemonic visions. The paper reveals that what is often presented as a primarily 'technical' transition is always normative in bringing forward particular forms of social and political order. Our analysis reveals important distinctions between more 'centred' and more decentred or 'alternative' imaginaries of the energy transition, differences which reveal the inherently political nature of energy futures. Visions which emerge from civil society settings are shown to be a key locus of diversity in sociotechnical imaginaries and tend to open up to alternative models of progress, social change, and the roles of publics. This emphasises the significant role played by the settings and the makeup of collective practices through which energy visions are co-produced. We suggest that mapping diverse visions to reveal their respective partialities, exclusions and sociopolitical dimensions in this way, can offer a more humble, reflexive, and responsible foundation for practices of future-making and sociotechnical transformations.

Community acceptability and the energy transition: a citizens’ perspective

“…This paper provides scholars with a qualitative toolkit that can unpack the conflicting positions of citizens who agree in principle to the transition to a low carbon economy, while also having more nuanced positions on the rollout of new energy infrastructure. There is now growing acceptance that utilising coproduction perspectives will be important if we are to rapidly decarbonise our energy systems in ways that are acceptable to the general public [96,97]. Our research contributes to this growing body of work on engaged research and offers a number of key insights into how such perspectives can be incorporated into the policy cycle.…”

The Potential of Bioeconomic Innovations to Contribute to a Social-Ecological Transformation: A Case Study in the Livestock System

“…Thus, the solution describes the socio-material answer to a perceived problem as the concrete "doing" (cf. Longhurst & Chilvers, 2019) of the actors or actor collective. In discourses on the principles of an SET, it is commonly highlighted that many sustainability problems are highly complex, which points to a societal interest in the problem and an orientation to a "common interest" (Hirsch Hadorn & Jäger, 2008).…”

“…In the theory of science, these different perspectives on research topics/objectives of research are described by differing ontologies and epistemologies. This also means that societal and individual values and thought styles become reflected and incarnated in the concrete framing of problems and the doing of according solutions (Jasanoff, 2015;Longhurst & Chilvers, 2019).…”

Policy-relevant insights for regional renewable energy deployment

“…Similarly, shared visions and expectations can promote and influence RE deployment, partly by framing or reframing debates on priorities around the deployment of new energy sources and their potential contribution [74]. Hence visions and imaginaries and the policies that translate them are shaped by the local/regional contexts, interests, priorities of those responsible for producing the vision(s) [75]. Moreover, electricity network capacity is integral to the exploitation of RE resources [76].…”