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- Convenors:
-
Sampsa Hyysalo
(Aalto University)
Gisle Solbu (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)
Thomas Berker (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)
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- Discussant:
-
Marianne Ryghaug
(Norwegian Univ. of Science and Technology)
- Format:
- Traditional Open Panel
Short Abstract:
Energy transitions enact new forms of democratic engagements into being. Direct material engagements with new technologies, physical and digital communities, social movements, new concerns in existing institutions and various policy experiments (etc) merit empirical and theoretical attention.
Long Abstract:
The dominant portrayal of energy transitions as a matter of technological fixes to environmental problems, paired with questions of social acceptability is very partial, at best. These wide and long sociotechnical processes enact new forms of democratic engagements into being. Some of these enactments emerge in response to issues that form publics such as those in climate change activism. Others are less conspicuous such as the many direct material engagements with low carbon technologies at homes, neighborhoods as well as in citizen involvement in local and digital energy communities. Yet other enactments emerge as new concerns and collaborations in existing institutions of representative democracy such as municipal councils. As important are the policy experiments towards new modes of democratic governance and knowledge coproduction in steering transitions, and the ways to understand them more adequately. Examining this expanded scope of democratic engagement in energy transitions is timely. Energy transitions have progressed profoundly during the last decade and most of the key technologies have matured and taken up in high numbers, yet this has also meant that the ‘low hanging fruits’ have already been collected regarding adopter segments, siting locations and financing of the low carbon solutions. The themes relevant to the panel include
– Citizen involvement and/or democratic engagement that become enacted and not enacted in energy transitions
– Affective modes of participation: the role of anger, frustration, and fear in citizen involvement
– The dark side of citizen involvement: tokenism, populism, and conspiracy theories
– The interrelations of different modes of democratic engagements in sociotechnical change
– The crowding-out, suppressing or silencing of democratic enactments in low carbon transitions
– Theories of citizen participation in the context of energy transitions
– Experiments towards democratic governance and knowledge coproduction
– Positioning of S&TS researchers amidst democratic engagements
Accepted papers:
Session 1Antti Silvast (LUT University)
Long abstract:
This paper centers on the exploration of knowledge infrastructures in energy systems, thus highlighting the critical role of digitalization, participatory practices, and modeled knowledge in shaping sustainable transitions. Acknowledging the complexity of global energy systems, especially in light of challenges like geopolitical conflicts and climate change, the paper examines comprehensive knowledge networks that integrate policy scenarios, simulation models, and interdisciplinary data.
In particular, the paper examines the nature of energy transition knowledge systems and the required social science theory for their study. Despite extensive research on computational models and scenarios of energy systems, a significant gap remains in understanding the dependence of knowledge on infrastructures for daily operations and planning in transitioning energy systems. I focus on attempts of energy researchers and policy makers to harmonize and validate 'social science data' - such as social acceptance, human habits, and societal drivers - into their complex scenarios and models, and the key epistemic challenges created.
The paper fulfils its aims by: 1) presenting a literature review to understand the interdependencies between computational modeling, digitalization, and energy infrastructures; 2) advancing my colleagues and mine previous work on dynamic and empirically rigorous theory on energy knowledge infrastructures; and 3) empirically validating this theory with case studies in Nordic energy systems, focusing on smart energy initiatives, Nordic market integration, and Nordic energy scenario modeling.
By integrating insights from STS, anthropology, and infrastructure studies, the paper puts forward a novel, interdisciplinary approach to examining energy transitions, offering significant contributions to both theory and practice.
Thomas Berker (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)
Long abstract:
Participation in urban planning originally served as a shield against the sweeping and disruptive changes imposed by top-down planning. However, with growing resistance against the changes proposed as part of urban sustainability transitions participation cannot be defined in this defensive way any longer. That citizens are likely to reject necessary changes - e.g., in relation to automobility - if given a say in urban planning, is today usually dealt with in two primary, non-exclusive ways:
- Downplayed and hidden changes: These prioritize technological alterations that minimize the direct impact on citizens. Unfortunately, such drop-in substitutions have limited effectiveness in reducing CO2 emissions.
- Reframed as co-creation: These participation exercises are often tokenistic, with the illusion of involvement shattered when co-creation workshops are open to all citizens rather than a carefully curated selection. Here, the participation aims to mobilize or - where this is not possible - to at least placate citizens.
In this paper, I propose revisiting the terms “co-design” and “co-production” as alternatives to “co-creation.” By taking the compound “co-” seriously and reflecting on the individual meanings of “design” and “production,” we can define key parameters for citizen participation that avoid the pitfalls of current practices. Drawing on theoretical insights from Bakhtin, Lefebvre, and Latour, as well as empirical examples from seven years of organizing citizen participation within a large research center focused on zero-emission neighborhoods, this proposal seeks to improve both our analytical toolbox and our contributions to sustainable urban planning.
Gisle Solbu (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) Tomas Moe Skjølsvold (Norwegian Uni. of Science and Technology)
Long abstract:
Based on the assumption that politics is present in most societal spheres, including innovation, science and everyday life, STS has since its inception in the late 1980s asked researchers to probe such arenas to understand the decentralized, distributed, and re-assembled characteristics of political decision-making. This perspective has been echoed in STS-studies of citizen participation and societal contestation in energy transitions. Key contributions have pointed to the distributed and continuous processes of citizen participation, the more-than-human characteristics of transition politics and the interplay of power between diverse actors. While we sympathize with these endeavors, we ask: Has STS’s enthusiasm for the “unlikely” actors of change and the “weird” places for politics made us develop a blind spot and a naïve ignorance about the importance of work done in traditional political institutions?
In this paper, we re-visit the role of representative democracy and institutionalized politics in shaping energy transition trajectories. Drawing on an interview study of political parties in the Norwegian parliament, we explore the roles of ideology and political climate in shaping parties' interpretation of, and willingness to promote, certain socio-technical pathways. Moreover, we unpack the internal party processes leading to technological objects, like nuclear energy technologies, rapidly gaining political attractiveness and public attention. Based on our analyses we shed new light on how technology development and innovation are interpreted and put to work within party political organizations and the government and argue that STS perspectives have been under-utilized in understanding this important socio-technical work that fundamentally shapes energy transitions.
Michael Ornetzeder (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
Long abstract:
Community energy initiatives demonstrate the benefits of pioneering the use of renewable technologies, improving sustainability, ensuring reliable energy supplies and even creating local jobs. Such initiatives are seen as key to a successful energy transition. What remains largely unknown, however, are the conditions under which community-based initiatives thrive and why they have so far been little mainstreamed. This paper explores this question through the concept of energy-commoning. Energy-commoning refers to the idea of collective or collaborative management and use of energy resources and is an emerging field within energy studies. Similar to the concept of commons in general, which refers to shared resources, energy-commoning specifically refers to the approach of organising energy sources, technologies and infrastructure democratically and participatively to enable a more equitable and sustainable energy supply. In our context, the term is used in a broad sense, going beyond classical energy communities and placing the common (energy) good at the centre of different levels of organisation, allowing for a wider variety of empirical examples. While the social principles for developing and sustaining commons have been extensively studied and empirically validated (Ostrom 1990, Ostrom 2010, Wilson, Ostrom et al. 2013), there has been almost no research exploring the principles for commons-enabling technologies and their practical relevance. The paper explores this question through a literature review and with reference to empirical examples of community-led multi-energy systems.
Allard de Graaf (Leiden University)
Long abstract:
Community-based initiatives (CBIs) are garnering attention as critical elements of transforming complex socio-technical systems, such as that of energy. These forms of engagement have classically been understood as separate from state-centered approaches, such as the structuralist (Offe, 2000) and institutionalist perspective (Ostrom, 2010). Others, however, have highlighted that “self-organization does not occur in an institutional and regulatory vacuum” (Celata & Coletti, 2018, p. 1; Chilvers & Longhurst, 2016). They rather co-produce each other through tensions and bargained collaborations in ever changing policy landscapes. These relations go beyond traditional participation initiated by government; indeed, this strand of research views state-community dynamics as encounters that are emergent, relational and contested.
Academic research of this state-community encounter in sustainability transitions remain scarce and unsystematic (Celata & Coletti, 2018; Raj et al., 2022). As a result, we lack both a theoretical understanding and a more robust empirical foundation about how CBIs and government relate to advance sustainability transitions. The proposed paper aims to fill these gaps by integrating literature of self-organization (Edelenbos et al., 2018; Edelenbos & Meerkerk, 2016; Igalla et al., 2019) and co-production (Bovaird & Loeffler, 2012; Brandsen & Honingh, 2016), which complements sustainability transition studies with an exploratory empirical base in multiple public domains, and a more zoomed-in understanding of how CBIs operate. The outlined ecology of theoretical state-community encounters will synthesize hitherto unconnected research fields. The paper will explore this ecology empirically using an emerging database of sustainability-related CBIs in the Netherlands.
Nils Oskar Tronrud (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)
Long abstract:
The Norwegian government is attempting to accelerate the decarbonisation of its industrial and transport sector through large-scale electrification, CCS, as well as employment of new green industries - all efforts mandating increases in electricity production and transmission. Yet these efforts are facing considerable challenges. Onshore wind energy was for long viewed as the ideal technology for increasing electricity production, but following a period of rapid deployment between 2017 and 2020 development has nearly stopped due to public resistance (Skjærseth et al., 2023). The concession process was too centralised and negligent of local values and interests, opposers argued (Vasstrøm & Lysgård, 2021). Subsequently, the Norwegian government has revised the process in hopes of restoring public legitimacy for onshore wind.
On the grid side, public resistance has received less attention and acceleration has been approached far more technocratic. Here, the focus has been on removing bureaucratic bottlenecks in the processing of grid connection and development applications to shorten timelines.
The two topics thus illustrate different strategies for improving concession processes to accelerate diffusion which demonstrate different formatting of publics and participation - one focusing on re-legitimising deployment by increasing local decision-making capabilities; another through streamlining and improving bureaucratic capacity.
Drawing on content analysis of decarbonisation strategies in Norwegian white papers and interviewees with actors from electricity production and transmission sectors, my paper examines how the energy transition has been altered in midst of growing public contestation and how controversy and acceleration shape the who, what and how of participatory practices.
Sampsa Hyysalo (Aalto University)
Long abstract:
Energy transitions are enacting new forms of citizen involvement into being. One increasingly common yet hitherto overlooked development in these democratic engagements relates to the hybridisation of residential heating solutions. Recent research on residential heating solutions indicates that hybrid heating is both widespread – e.g. over half of the Finnish detached houses may now have it – and it invites material engagement in and between renewables among detached house dwellers. We examine close-up the hybrid solutions which houseowners’ have set up: how different hybrid solutions have been acquired, adapted and integrated, and how houseowners’ demographic backgrounds have influenced these aspects. Semi-structured interviews with 56 Finnish houseowners display high diversity in hybrid solutions. Most hybrids feature some integration and adaptions and have been arrived at gradually. Our findings highlight the importance of material factors (existing heating solutions and building age) in shaping what kinds of hybrids homeowners acquire. Always configured to function in particular settings, we conceptualise hybrid solutions as arrangements that work, which mesh, among other things, material, social and economic factors and resources to generate locally functioning heating solutions. In this capacity, hybrid heating encompasses many different demographic groups and orientations. From a policy perspective ‘hybrid heaters’ do not form a coherent group to which supporting measures are easy to target, yet it does suggest that users’ capacity to advance the energy transition is broadly distributed, including advanced carbon reduction among frontrunners as well as minimisation of fossil fuel use among those who retain some fossil heating.
Tineke van der Schoor (Hanze University of Applied Sciences) Henny van der Windt (University of Groningen)
Long abstract:
Community energy can be conceptualized as a social movement, which aims to develop a sustainable, democratic, and localist energy system. Increasingly, community energy initiatives aim to develop citizen-led heating projects. District heating projects are characterized by costly investments, a substantial overhaul of local infrastructure, large installations for heat production, and require specialized technical knowledge.
Based on Social Movement Theory, we developed a theoretical framework consisting of three main networks: internal, external, and material.
In the Netherlands, we studied four cases of citizen-led heating projects. Our primary research question is what a citizen-led DH-project constitutes. We focus on four themes: the internal organization of the CH-project; its outreach to local citizens; the role of technical knowledge and technology choices; the changing role of municipalities in the local energy transition.
We situate our findings against a broader European background. We conclude that a democratic structure, transparency of decision making, and a high level of neighborhood participation are key success factors. However, in some cases the choice for a low-cost solution led to concessions to the sustainability of the proposed solutions.
Euibeom Son (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)) Yookyung Chin (KAIST) Dasom Lee (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST))
Long abstract:
The South Korean government is aiming to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, but it is not proactive in reducing the use of liquified natural gas (LNG), which currently accounts for 25 percent of total power generation in Korea. Such action is publicly justified due to the misconception among the public that LNG is relatively clean and safe despite being classified as fossil fuels. From the viewpoint of discursive opposition structures (DOS) theory, we raise the possibility that the media landscape conceals the environmental challenges that LNG generation poses and obstructs the development of public discourse on renewable energy transition. The paper uses media broadcasts and newspaper articles that discuss LNG from 2010 to 2022, which are analyzed using both inferential statistics and discourse analysis. The preliminary results show that the terms 'shipping industry' and 'particulate matter' are mainly mentioned together with LNG from economic and environmental perspective, which lead to positive reports on LNG consumption and imports in the nation. In addition, given that Korea's energy management is centralized, LNG issue is interconnected to the political controversy on other energy issues such as nuclear power generation. The findings indicate that these social and economic structures lead to both conservative leaning and liberal leaning media outlets supporting the use of LNG. We argue that more diverse studies are needed on how national perspectives align with the interests of the media and can lead to the suppression of civic participation in the energy transition processes.
Goeun Kuu-Park (Aalto University) Cindy Kohtala (Umeå University)
Long abstract:
Citizen-led renewable energy initiatives are a key player in accelerating inclusive and democratic energy transition. Recently, the urgency of addressing global warming at an unprecedented rate requires more diverse types of communities to engage in energy transition. Educational institutions (schools) have a great potential to teach not only energy citizenship but also create novel and innovative forms of engagements for youth who are a key stakeholder as well as a minority in the current energy transition. This paper reports on an action research project that investigates how codesign activities, combined with a Do-It-Yourself method, can support energy innovation and by extension foster transition from mere educational institutions into a community of practice around energy innovation. Six projects were conducted in five secondary schools in Finland and South Korea, and data was collected in each site from the stage of planning to designing and use. Inspired by situational analysis, we broaden our analytic view to map the interrelations and tensions across artifacts, people, institutions, national and international norms and standards, and so on, which reveal opportunities and barriers across different scales. The projects of codesigning and building a small-scale renewable energy technology unfolded across different scales of both education and energy domains. We also discuss concord and conflict between the scales and the impact on how the renewable energy generators could be embraced in the school. This lends insights into how such initiatives can be “institutioned” and how energy communities can be supported.
Rahul Shukla (Vellore Institute of Technology)
Long abstract:
Renewable energy transition has become one of the foremost policy instruments in the midst of climate mitigation and sustainable development all over the world. Such large-scale transitions, substantiated through development initiatives, lead to the conflict with resources, viz., land and water. Existing studies on energy transitions, especially from the global south, reveal the prevalent cases of land appropriation in the name of renewable energy and subsequent implications to the communities. This paper traces the trajectory of shifting categorisation of land on the backdrop of India’s renewable energy programmes particularly—biofuels. What are the differing perceptions of various stakeholders such as farming communities, researchers, and government officials over the land appropriated for biofuel crops; and thereby the nature of resistance and negotiation exercised by the communities? Based on the ethnographic fieldwork, focused group observations, in-depth interviews of the participants, and policy documents pertaining to India’s approach to land categorisation, we identify the presence of crisis narratives and its corroboration with the idea of ‘land improvement’ in energy transition programmes since post-independent development projects. We argue that energy transition programmes create a contrary situation where the idea of land improvement is obscuring the concerns of communities dependent on them. Despite ubiquitous promotion and projected benefit of renewable energies for rural areas, the communities do hesitate in adopting the transition vis-à-vis their embeddedness with the land. Indeed, their resistance emerges in the form of not aligning with the land classification and the subversive knowledge that produces the idea of land improvement.
Tadeusz Józef Rudek (Jagiellonian University) Roża Rudek (Jagiellonian University) Hui-Tzu Huang (Feng Chia University, Taiwan)
Long abstract:
As a world leader in advanced semiconductor production, Taiwan provides stability to the digital world, while being at the forefront of global uncertainties related to the US-China-rivalry. As an island on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, it is also severely affected by climate change. Torn between a past and a technoscientific future, its society is redefining its identity based on different narratives: Indigenous, Taiwanese and Chinese.
With limited land, water and energy resources, Taiwan's energy system - especially with its commitments to carbon reduction plans - faces many challenges, such as balancing the growing demand for energy and resources to develop the semiconductor industry. One of the ways to increase the number of renewable sources is to tap the potential of geothermal energy and the land (PV or wind) to produce it in the south-eastern province of Taitung - inhabited by several indigenous tribes, making it the site of the first conflict between a company investing in PV and the indigenous people.
This work illustrates moments of clash between different imagined legal and epistemological orders. The first case study illustrates the construction of a geothermal power plant in indigenous territory, but with the cooperation of the local tribe. The second is an investment by a private company in indigenous territory without any cooperation with the local tribe. The third is an indigenous energy cooperative aimed at meeting energy needs. The fourth is a PV investment in the Zhiben wetlands that was stopped by the local tribe, NGOs and lawyers.