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- Convenors:
-
Caroline Anna Salling
(Technical University of Denmark)
Amanda Obitz Mogensen (Technical University of Denmark)
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- Discussant:
-
Christopher Gad
(IT-University of Copenhagen)
- Format:
- Traditional Open Panel
Short Abstract:
Societal decarbonisation is emerging both in theory and in practice. In contradiction, emissions are still increasing. To understand why that is, we need to ask: Which are the centres of carbonisation in which emissions are economically, technologically, and socially both clustered and countered?
Long Abstract:
While decarbonisation has emerged as a stable term referring to the societal processes actively decreasing overall carbon emissions, carbonisation usually refers to the technical processes that produce carbon. Yet carbon emissions are economically, technologically, and socially both clustered and countered.
Practical counterwork takes place in the contestations which we study as well as within the making and doing of decarbonisation that we as researchers aspire to contribute to. To mobilise arrangements of ‘carbonisation’ conceptually, we ask the following questions:
Which are the clustered centres and the peripheries of carbonisation? And, consequently, where does decarbonisation have to take place?
We suggest the centres of carbonisation can be found within a broad range of contemporary societal arrangements, including but not limited to battery gigafactories, pension funds, energy utilities, data storage and AI computing, metals and minerals mining, chemicals manufacturing, industrial scale agriculture, property construction, and fossil fuels extraction, and we invite our peers to think openly with which other arrangements this conceptualisation can include.
The processes of carbonisation and decarbonisation are interrelated and tied to processes at different scales, but how can we study such interrelations - by intervening into the ecologically devastating effects of continuously intensifying, policy mandated planetary carbonisation? Or by intervening into the scientific agendas that have promised but not yet sufficiently mobilized decarbonisation?
We hope for submissions that are interested in discussing with us an emerging STS agenda ‘countering the centres of carbonisation’ and contribute via a broad range of technopolitical themes, such as: Industrial energy production and consumption, mining landscapes, business models, and sustainable investment.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Amanda Obitz Mogensen (Technical University of Denmark)
Short abstract:
Workers are increasingly aware of the connection between their pension savings and carbon emissions. Thus, pension companies have begun to decarbonise. By producing lists, they exclude specific corporations from their investment portfolios. I explore the exclusion lists as central devices.
Long abstract:
Recent heat records and extreme weather serve as reminders that rapid decarbonisation is needed. Sustainable finance has become a dominant regime for addressing one of the most acute planetary problems. Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) managers are increasingly hired to implement what is in vernacular referred to as responsible investment practices. My empirical focus is on Danish pension companies strategizing to align with the Paris Agreement. Nevertheless, there is a disconnect; every pension company in Denmark, to some capacity, invest in fossil-fuel-based corporations in which carbon emissions occur as a central part of the business operation. This paper explores how the increasing awareness that workers are connected to global capital through their pension savings implicates the decarbonisation project. The analysis is based on fieldwork at a pension company, interviews with ESG employees as well as pension companies’ ‘exclusion lists’. These are documents determining which corporations do not align with the pension funds’ investment strategies. The lists vary in size; while some have less than a hundred companies on the list, another has 945 companies excluded, all based on different definitions of responsibility. I show how exclusion lists work as devices integrating and, therefore, producing different definitions of carbonisation and decarbonisation into financial streams. By assessing the exclusion lists political power on the concrete side of intervention, the paper opens up for a discussion around how financial key actors continue to make possible planetary carbonisation while attempting to part-take in decarbonisation projects.
Matteo Vivi (University of Vienna)
Short abstract:
Exploring representations of electric engines as “zero emissions”, I analyze how Tesla re-centers carbonization away from the driver, sketching a future of mobility where energy transitions leave unquestioned the demand of “behind-the-wheel” masculinities for space, speed, and comfort.
Long abstract:
In light of oil-soaked ideals of petro-masculinity securing exhibitions of hegemony through intensive and violent fossil fuel consumption, I examine how Tesla’s consumer stories envision the encounter of men and electric batteries within sociotechnical systems of automobility, exploring how corporate representations co-construct drivers and vehicles in gendered ways. Using multimodal discourse analysis on video material, I show how the “driver-car” appropriates movement as a work of gendered, age-dependent, and classed culture. Through a “Zero emissions, Zero compromises” rhetoric avoiding any thematization of possible sustainability downsides in the production, charging and disposal of electric batteries, Tesla validates energy-soaked lifestyles in an age of climate change marked by the urgency to decarbonize, enabling “green” enactments of fast, aggressive, and reckless styles of driving that come to be constructed as "impactless". Electric batteries de-center carbonization away from the male driver, allowing him to ground endorsements of environmentalism within traditionally hegemonic energy epistemologies: Tesla drivers choose electricity over oil but remain as “soaked” in violent and reckless consumptions of energy as petro-masculinities. Fully charged up, the "driver-car" penetrates and assimilates previously hostile and gender-threatening scripts of environmental care, rearranging itself as an ecomodern sociotechnical actor who, by moving and relocating, debunks that preventing disastrous planetary change will require new ways of thinking about, valuing, and inhabiting energy systems.
Hardy Antoine (Centre Emile-Durkheim)
Short abstract:
This talk examine the central and peripheral aspects of carbonization within the French public laboratories, to discuss the ontological nature of a carbonization center.
Long abstract:
My ongoing STS dissertation examines the methodological and epistemological implications of decarbonization in the French public research sector. My fieldwork involves a group of French scientists who have been striving to decarbonize the sector through the development and implementation of their own carbon-tracker.
My main argument is that to gain a deeper understanding of 'societal decarbonization,' it is essential to examine both the central and peripheral aspects of carbonization within each sector, even those that may not initially appear highly carbon intensive. Understanding, in this context, entails not only identifying the 'factors' contributing to carbonization but also scrutinizing the power dynamics involved.
My research involved interviewing numerous scientists and engineers who began by quantifying carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions from their labs to prioritize areas for intervention. For some laboratories (in biology, for instance) material purchases emerged as the primary source of CO2e emissions, whereas for others, particularly in the social and human sciences, missions, and in particular extensive air travel, had a significant impact. Many interviewees highlighted the distinction between decarbonization efforts within their control and those beyond their influence, such as relationships with suppliers, building insulation, project-based funding versus permanent funding, staffing shortages, etc.
The decarbonization process becomes even more complex when a central source of carbonization is qualified as inherent and essential to research practices (plastic materials or plane transportation, for instance). This case-study intends to provide new insights to discuss the ontological nature of a carbonization center.
William Throndsen (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)
Short abstract:
Data from interviews with energy researchers are presented to shed light on how knowledge is co-produced between oil and gas industry actors and private and public research institutions, and whether such co-production serves to prolong fossil fuel era or engender a green transition.
Long abstract:
We have in the past years seen traditional oil companies make substantial efforts to transform themselves into energy companies with expanded repertoires needed to face the impending energy transition. This poses the question of what role oil and gas companies have in contributing to a sustainability transition. The Norwegian Oil and Gas sector is a large center of carbonization on a global scale, but strategies of de-carbonization of the operation of the fields as well as the consumption of fossil fuels are being developed alongside it. These include for instance carbon capture and storage (CCS), but also electrification of the installations themselves by connecting them to the mainland grid or by powering them with offshore wind energy. This last strategy has seen large oil and gas actors turn some of their investments into renewable energy technology.
Not only is the sector itself working on decarbonization strategies, but knowledge communities within both private and public research institutions are as well, some of them even by the help of funding from the oil and gas sector. It has been argued that this cooperation may put knowledge production at risk of serving to prolong the fossil-fuel era, instead of bringing a speedy transition towards renewables. Preliminary findings from ~50 interviews with oil and gas sector related research actors are presented, to shed light on how researchers and oil and gas industry actors co-produce knowledge related to both a continuation of oil as well as a green transition.