Paper short abstract:

Through analyzing the design and use of global energy scenarios in the World Energy Council (WEC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA), I address two modalities of future foresight and imagination and their possible contribution to future transition and social change.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I examine global energy scenarios and the work around them and discern two distinct modalities of governing the future with scenarios and the ways in which they promote possible future transitions. I differentiate between modern and contemporary mobility by analyzing scenario experts' perceptions and methods. The modern modality of future scenarios consists of a normative perception, a quantitative methodology, and a fractured linear temporality. The contemporary modality of future scenarios consists of an explorative perception, a qualitative methodology, and a contemporaneous temporality. I argue that the former modality is driven by a concern with normative goals and achieving those through designing desirable paths and works to identify actions, decisions, processes, and developments that might impede or deviate from those goals and to formulate interventions so those are prevented or corrected. The latter, in contrast, concerns itself with the contemporaneous emergence of old and new drivers, trends, and factors and their remediation to explore plausible future pathways to reevaluate assumptions and actions that concern the mutually shaped present and future. The analysis of the development, design, and use of global energy scenarios mainly focuses on the scenario work of two global energy organizations: the World Energy Council (WEC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA).