The rhetorical fantasy of energy transitions: implications for energy policy and analysis

Sovacool, Benjamin K.; Brossmann, Brent

doi:10.1080/09537325.2014.905674

Cited by 27 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Put another way, all individuals suffer from varying degrees of "trained incapacity," "selective remembrance," and "occupational psychosis," related terms that describe how prepare people to see the world in certain ways, while simultaneously developing a bias that blinds them to other perspectives (Sovacool and Brossmann, 2014;Sovacool and Ramana, 2015) Competing conceptions of energy systems usually result from different frames, which become evident as readers explore Table 1, which reveals no less than eight competing energy frames underpinning opposing positions throughout various energy issuesand this list is far from exhaustive.…”

Section: Energy Facts and Energy Framesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deconstructing facts and frames in energy research: Maxims for evaluating contentious problems

Sovacool

Brown

2015

Energy Policy

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Section: Energy Facts and Energy Framesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deconstructing facts and frames in energy research: Maxims for evaluating contentious problems

Sovacool

Brown

2015

Energy Policy

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“…In this way, new hydropower projects contain a promise of providing solutions to broad societal challenges and can be seen as a kind of an 'imagined world' ( [14], Anderson's term imagined community´ [21]), wherein hydraulic technology serves to prevent human and ecological disasters in a sustainable and profitable way (cf. [12,13,15]). Hydropower is, therefore, not only an economic or techno-scientific project but, importantly, a political one.…”

Section: Expectations Shaping Energy Futures Technological Choices Amentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This article addresses such efforts in the context of the Andean country Ecuador, which exemplifies recent developmental challenges and the ways in which a new hydroelectricity-driven energy policy approach has been negotiated, contested and legitimised. In this context, the role of expectations is crucial: the ways in which the new hydraulic megaprojects such as the 1500 MW Coca Codo Sinclair (CCS) are motivated and imagined have important repercussions for how energy futures, values, industrial transformations, social organization and governance are understood, rationalised and managed [9][10][11][12][13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This article focuses on expectations and confronting knowledge regimes (see the introduction in this volume) concerning water and technology, understood as hydropower infrastructure, in the CCS as it exemplifies current challenges in sustainability governance and green transitions. Drawing on sociological science and technology studies, in particular the sociology of expectations [10,[12][13][14] and transitions studies literature [1,2,9,12], the article takes an actor-oriented approach and examines recent expectations and future visions regarding the CCS among various actors at different levels and spheres of Ecuadorian society. We show how the project is understood by diverse actors, ranging from instrumental and functionalist-pragmatic interpretations to addressing an intrinsic value of water and technology or generating symbolic understandings.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The sociology of expectations has been applied, for example, to biomedical research [10,15] but less often in relation to natural resources governance or hydropower (see, however, [9,12]). This article emphasises the performativity of expectations [10,13], i.e., how expectations shape politics, the future, technology, stakeholder interactions and concrete policies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Negotiating Water and Technology—Competing Expectations and Confronting Knowledges in the Case of the Coca Codo Sinclair in Ecuador

Teräväinen

2019

Water

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Recent and on-going mega-hydraulic development in the global South implies profound socio-technical, ecological, territorial and cultural transformations at different levels and spaces of society. The transformations often involve conflicts and also new governance arrangements between different knowledge regimes, local practices and national and global frameworks of climate mitigation, water resources management and the green economy. Significantly, they also entail varying expectations concerning the meaning of water and the political promises of technology in advancing more sustainable futures. Drawing on sociological science and technology studies, particularly the sociology of expectations, this article analyses competing, parallel and confronting expectations regarding water and technology that different actors produce, negotiate and contest in the context of the recently launched 1500 MW hydropower megaproject Coca Codo Sinclair in Ecuador. It takes expectations as performative as they may shape and challenge policies, discourses, social interactions, institutions and power relations. By analysing and comparing these expectations, the article scrutinises the socio-technical imaginaries and related knowledge regimes they represent, derive from and support, and what kinds of repercussions these have in terms of water resources management in particular and sustainability governance in general.

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Glacial energy futures? The history of unbuilt hydropower in Greenland from the 1950s to the 1970s

Priebe

2024

Water Hist

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This article examines how and by whom the future of glacial energy was imagined in Greenland between the 1950s and 1970s, with a specific emphasis on the intersection of discourses of energy and political autonomy. The focus lies on the years from 1953, marking the end of Greenland’s colonial status and its integration into the realm of its former colonial authority, Denmark, until 1979, when the Greenland Home Rule Agreement was enacted. The futures of hydropower are explored through the lens of energy imaginaries, a notion that underscores the interconnectedness between different forms of energy and the organization of social structures. These imaginaries revolving around hydropower circulated in the public-political space in Greenland decades prior to when the first operational hydropower plant came online in 1993. Through a historical empirical analysis, this article identifies the energy imaginaries linked to envisioned hydropower and delineates key phases of their emergence. It also discusses these envisioned futures of hydropower in the historical context of Arctic oil exploration and Greenland’s strivings toward political autonomy. The energy imaginaries of hydropower, especially glacial hydropower generated adjacent to Greenland’s inland icesheet, built on a long-term timeline and autonomous society, in contrast to the oil development that was favoured by Danish authorities at the time. Ultimately, it was the considerations of the sources and scale of the necessary investments that deferred the implementation of hydropower until the late 1980s. However, the groundwork for viewing Greenland’s water resources as a cornerstone for its future independence had been laid.

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The rhetorical fantasy of energy transitions: implications for energy policy and analysis

Cited by 27 publications

References 24 publications

Deconstructing facts and frames in energy research: Maxims for evaluating contentious problems

Deconstructing facts and frames in energy research: Maxims for evaluating contentious problems

Negotiating Water and Technology—Competing Expectations and Confronting Knowledges in the Case of the Coca Codo Sinclair in Ecuador

Glacial energy futures? The history of unbuilt hydropower in Greenland from the 1950s to the 1970s

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