Paper short abstract:

Debates about shale gas exploration tend to revolve around primarily two axes: of knowledge and time. This is the plane on which many certainties and uncertainties about the past, present and future of energy and democracy are being played out between actors embedded in unequal social relationships.

Paper long abstract:

Decisions about shale gas developments are made in the face of many uncertainties about their future harms and benefits. Nevertheless, some claim they are also based on many "certainties" about the adequacy of science and regulatory frameworks. The weight accorded to each of these aspects depends on a complex interplay of the politics of knowledge and time between governments, extractive industry and local populations. All sides use knowledge and time to their advantage by mobilising their expertise and expanding or contracting time for action.

Based on my fieldwork in Lancashire, UK, I will adopt a grassroots lens to explore these dynamics after four years of public protest and civil disobedience in the area. Contrary to political and technocratic rhetoric, knowledge has not neutralised the inherent power imbalances between state, industry and local communities. Residents have had to work towards gaining detailed knowledge about the techniques and impacts of fracking as well as overcoming time-related barriers to match their expertise with democratic agency and empowerment. Grassroots groups have been reappropriating the tactics of their opponents by using science and expertise to confirm the indeterminacy of knowledge about the benefits of fracking. May they also be "repowering" democracy from the ground up by utilising expertise to expand and hence, undermine the narrow parameters of technocratic and political decisions? Are they anticipating a new kind of democratic politics when they are reaffirming the political and temporal nature of decision-making related to shale gas as not a matter of evidence but one of judgement?