Paper long abstract:

The Fukushima accident that followed the earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011 has been investigated by numerous scholarly communities as one of most recent techno-natural disasters. This paper wants to contribute to this on-going debate through understanding one essential mode of ordering at work in such a situation of disaster and through reflecting how this supports nuclear energy actors' efforts to re-envision nuclear containment. I will elaborate on a delimitation regime put in place in the aftermath of the disaster, i.e. investigate how the (temporal) reordering of space around Fukushima and well beyond can be read as the creation of a specific sociotechnical imaginary of containment through spatial reordering.

The paper will focus on three kinds of techniques deployed: map-making, physical demarcations, and containers for contaminated waste-water and radioactive soil. Concretely I will investigate different kinds of radiation and evacuation maps, look into practices of physically defining/imposing zones of non-/limited habitation and reflect on the efforts to collect and "localize" radioactive waste-water and soil.

This will lead me (1) to argue how the keeping of power in such a situation is relying on the capacity to influence the production and distribution of space and (2) to show the development of a new sociotechnical imaginary of nuclear containment through spatial reordering.

The paper empirically draws on two site-visits to the Fukushima prefecture, a collection of visual material used in debates and talks, extensive conversation with medical practitioners in Fukushima and other experts visiting the area.

Paper long abstract:

This paper uses the lens of sociotechnical imaginaries around nuclear power (Jasanoff and Kim, 2009) to examine accounts of nuclear waste disposal in the UK and Finland and how these have been shaped by the events at Fukushima in March 2011. Evidence will be drawn from an analysis of the public representations of waste debates in official and media accounts.

The events at Fukushima generated widely differing responses across Europe. Germany swiftly reversed its energy policy and announced its intention to phase out nuclear power by 2022. Yet, little immediate effect was visible in some countries, e.g. Finland, while support for nuclear power in others, e.g. the UK, has been growing post-Fukushima.

As issues of waste management have become more visible post-Fukushima, how has debate on it shifted? How can we understand the different impacts and responses across Europe? This paper suggests that the answers lie in understanding what factors go into the imagination of nuclear nationhood (Felt, 2013) and what forms of social order fulfil or constrain certain technoscientific projects. The paper argues that repercussions of nuclear disasters interact with, rather than dominate, local concerns and national imperatives.

The empirical work presented in this paper takes disposal debates in England and Finland as case studies to open up the effects of Fukushima on socio-technical imaginations. The analysis of these debates will illuminate the logics that are at play in the English and Finnish context and that serve to explain the differing positions on nuclear waste management post-Fukushima.

Paper long abstract:

After a long and conflict-ridden history of failed attempts to identify a community to host a deep geological repository for the country's high- and medium-level radioactive waste, the French authorities have designated a small village in a rural, sparsely populated and economically declining region as a host for the repository. The construction of the repository is to start in 2017, and the facility would become operational in 2025. This complex and contested "megaproject" promises to bring considerable socio-economic benefits to an economically suffering region, yet it also generates significant health, environmental, and socio-economic concerns.

This paper examines conflicts through the perspective of a specific governance tool, namely the ex ante and ex post evaluation of the socio-economic aspects of the project. The paper identifies the potential and the pitfalls of such evaluation in a highly conflict-ridden policy context characterised by strong mistrust and widespread reticence towards evaluation. The paper is based on fieldwork concerning the actor "repertoires" - dominant ways of thinking and acting, embedded in and governed by the institutionalised norms, practices, technologies, and rules of key actors in the governance of the project. Results from fieldwork on radioactive waste disposal projects in Finland, Sweden, and the UK are used as comparative examples to illustrate the articulation between the country-specific governance context and the repertoires in shaping the conditions for socio-economic evaluation.

Paper long abstract:

Nuclear energy is a controverted energy. EASST call for papers quite rightly underlines the controversial and contentious dimensions of energy sources choices, such as future generation of nuclear power plants for example. This communication aims to focus on scenarios, conceived as tools used by different groups to argue in favor of particular energy solutions. For example, an ecological association may use energy demand prospective scenarios and cost of sustainable energies hypothesis to demonstrate that the reduction of carbon emission is possible, if the right political decisions are made. In another perspective, nuclear industrials or specialized R&D centers may use the same kind of scenarios to argue in favor of investment in new nuclear technologies, such as breeders. "Because they contribute to nuclear waste recycling, and because nuclear energy does not produce carbon emissions, these reactors may be used in a sustainable perspective", could be the argumentation of nuclear actors for instance.

Based on empirical material (industrial and scientific interviews, meeting observations…), this presentation will propose a typology of different kind of scenarios to analyze nuclear energy controversies. Nuclear scenarios use nuclear data (particles interactions, fission phenomenon…) to predict the amount of fissile material that will result from the run of a whole nuclear park. Economical and socio-economic scenarios integer nuclear power plants as an energy resource in a global thinking optimizing consumption and production of energy, including coal, oil and renewable energies. Scientific and industrial scenarios are presented as two different time-scale tools, both potentially useful to make decisions for the future.

Paper long abstract:

Energy and environmental law and policy are both "shared competences" in Euroean Union law. Moreover, Article 194 TFEU on the one hand asks for common action to reach the energy and environmental objectives, but on the other hand, the second paragraph leaves it to the Member States to exploit their resources and to choose their internal supply structure.

In regard to shale gas, the Member States have different approaches on the issue. The latest situation where this became apparent was the blocking of the mandatory EIA for shale gas projects by the Council, even if the European Parliament voted for the inclusion of hydraulic fracturing in the Commission's proposal. Shale gas extraction is a highly political topic, the position the Council took is not surprising considering the ongoing activities in Member States such UK and Poland who are generally keen on promoting the resource to secure its internal energy supply. However, the Commission and some other EU Member States urge to establish a common playing field in the area of unconventional gas extraction.

This paper will assess to what extent the Union has competence to act and how the issue of shale will affect the Union's quest for a common energy policy in the absence of a Treaty provision: Do the Energy Title and its opting out mechanism in the second paragraph prevent a common energy policy (on unconventional gas resources) in the future? Does it lead to a fragmentation of EU energy law?

Paper long abstract:

The US energy revolution has sparked interest in potential shale gas development in Europe. Attitudes towards this development vary among countries - from Poland and the UK where test drillings already have been carried out to France which upholds a ban on fracking. In the Netherlands, which has an extensive gas history, these developments have led to a lively societal and political debate about shale gas and fracking. The Rathenau Instituut analysed the societal debate through a media analysis, and studied the way the government has governed the debate through desk research and by conducting stakeholder interviews. Several dominant concerns were identified. The paper aims to provide insight in the used policy strategies in the decision making process on shale gas in the Netherland, and its effects. More specifically, the analysis focuses on the interactions between the different government levels (national, regional and local) in the process of working towards a broadly supported decision on shale gas. These interactions take place in a complex field of actors such as politicians, local citizens, societal groups, advisory groups, industry, knowledge institutions. To this end, the paper addresses consecutive governance (political-administrative) strategies that were used by the national government in the decision making process on shale gas in the Netherlands. The strategies were deployed in response to controversies that arose and include: following legal procedures; conducting participatory general risk research and prolongation by organizing new location-specific research.

Paper long abstract:

The aim of the paper is to examine how the widespread access to the Internet is changing the dynamic of siting conflicts, opening new and heterogonous ways to produce knowledge and solidarity. The analysis is drawn on two chosen siting controversies occurred during first stage of shale gas prospecting in Poland, where Internet were used as a part of contrasting strategies.

Siting controversy is understood as situation when some representatives of local community contest the decision to locate certain facility, presented as vital for the interest of wider community and commonly applies to energy technologies conflicts. These conflicts usually are complex: comprise issues of equity and justice, participation and agency, transparency and trust, controversy on possible risks imposed by the facility, and different view on general development goals. What is crucial for the paper, disproportion of resources and power between local citizenry and promoter of the investment often occurs.

One of the important dimension of this disproportion consists on unequal access to information and expertise, and even more unequal potential to create message heard beyond local environment. I analyse how widespread access to the Internet and new ways Web content is created introduced a change in the situation of local citizens seeking for knowledge and support during siting conflicts, and in consequence, changes relation between investors and local community and allows local activists to by-pass national discussion by picking and choosing from the pool of facts, viewpoints and framings accessible in the Web, coming from different national and regulatory contexts.

Paper long abstract:

Over the last 10 years the controversies around the sitting of renewable energy facilities became a prominent topic of research in STS, in great part due to the fast implementation of these technologies promoted by European governments. However, controversies on the sitting of photovoltaic plants remain quite understudied as most of the research deals with wind power implementation.

Solar energy is generally presented as the most consensual of all the renewable energy sources, lacking some of the local impacts of wind turbines such as noise and bird mortality. Some local controversies are identified, especially on landscape impact, but generally the issues pointed on solar power are those associated with cost and financial support.

This presentation aims to contribute to this discussion drawing on a case study of the 64MW photovoltaic plant installed in Amareleja, in the south of Portugal. The study is based on interviews with local stakeholders and population, analysis of national and local media, and a workshop with stakeholders.

This solar plant is peculiar in having a significant participation from the municipality in its initial stages, despite being a large scale project. The municipality made an effort to guarantee some impact on local socioeconomic development and this is the most salient issue. Local politicians and businessmen and the population share different opinions on which benefits should have been negotiated and their distribution.

The research is based on a project intituled "Sociotechnical consensus and controversies on renewable energy", funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (PTDC/CS-ECS/118877/2010).

Paper long abstract:

So far, most analyses of low-carbon transitions have either focused on particular governance levels (e.g. national energy policy), particular functions (e.g. the electricity system) or particular actor perspectives (e.g. supply vs. demand side perspectives). Cities are an arena where the above-mentioned levels (e.g. urban-global), functional subsystems (e.g. transport-energy) and actor constituencies (e.g. suppliers-users) meet and intersect. Measures to making energy or transport systems more sustainable create new zones of friction and inconsistency within existing socio-technical regimes and between different sectors. Moreover, different groups of (urban) actors frame the problem of low-carbon transitions quite differently and embed it into different types of socio-political discourse which in turn may also result in conflicts and 'trials of force' between different actor perspectives. Recent actor-network-theory-inspired approaches such as 'navigational governance' (Jorgensen 2012), 'transition mediators' (Jensen 2013) or 'urban green assemblages' (Blok 2013) adopt this more conflict-oriented and actor-based view. In our contribution we will apply such a perspective to two exemplary case studies in the cities of Graz, Austria (construction of a new hydropower station), and Freiburg, Germany (heat supply of a low-energy-building district). In both cases socio-technical reconfigurations aiming at greater sustainability create new zones of friction, pitch different actor worlds against each other and reframe visions of more sustainable cities which to some extent become an emergent property of situated socio-technical constellations and actor configurations.

Paper long abstract:

Geothermal energy is seen as an important factor for renewable energy systems. Geothermal heating for private houses and public buildings is perceived as an almost limitless energy potential with stable availability, and the promise to gain some independence from established energy markets. Compared with other renewable energy sources at first sight geothermal energy seems to be an almost "perfect" energy source. However, the installations of downhole heat exchangers and heat pumps - often fostered by political goals and economic incentives - have triggered controversies on environmental effects and potential risks of the technology. Questions often emerge in situ while new facilities are installed and in use. Answers need to be found in the course of the development as no laboratory experiments are possible. Thus understood the geological underground and the attached single households over ground become the laboratory. In the course of experimentation, actors have to deal with ever-changing situations as regards the use of the renewable energy source and environmental safety. In this presentation we will discuss results of an investigation of learning and coping experiences that environmental administrators and house owners had during the processes of utilizing geothermal energy sources. We will analyze strategies that actors rely on when dealing with open questions as regards novel technologies and quality control. We will show on how actors become experts in geothermal energy tapping and usage through learning by doing and continuously moving into the unknown underground.

Paper long abstract:

The energy system is full of contested technologies, policies and projects. One of the complexities for the energy transition is that although new energy technologies are generally evaluated positively on a socio-political level, their implementation goes together with quite some contestation and (local) opposition. Such local debates do not exist in isolation from wider socio-political debates on energy transition, where different stakeholders may all agree that a transition to a sustainable energy system is necessary and desirable, yet they have different expectations and visions as regards the technologies to play a role in the energy transition, how, and how fast the transitions should or can occur. Rather than viewing conflict and controversy as 'NIMBY' behaviour that is blocking or delaying innovation, we conceptualize controversies as a source of learning. Controversy reveal "socially valuable differences […]for the enrichment of all concerned" (Follet, 1924, p103) and thus provide "partly conflicting assessments of new technologies or of the impacts of actual or proposed projects, that are further articulated and consolidated in the course of a controversy" (Rip, 1986). As such, controversies are a form of extended peer-review (Funtowicz & Ravetz, 1993) of policy processes, or informal assessments of technology (Rip, 1986). Based on media-analysis and interviews, this paper analyses learning in the Dutch controversy on shale gas. It is argued that 'controversy as extended peer review' asks for a governance strategy that 1) fosters constructive conflict in controversy rather than its avoidance or resolution and 2) a heterogeneous and fluid conceptualization of 'publics'.

Paper long abstract:

The spatial dimensions of technological controversies have often been neglected in STS research. In this presentation I mobilise insights from human geography to highlight how the politics of geographic scale is played out in the governance of energy transition. The empirical case is a proposed nuclear power plant construction project in Wylfa, on the Isle of Anglesey, in the north of Wales. Instead of being standalone project, Wylfa Newydd is envisioned as constituting the so-called Anglesey Energy Island. The island is, however, not the only scale invoked. Looking at the level of Wales, UK and even the EU, strikingly different definitions of the Wylfa project are used in the efforts of strengthening the relevant levels of governance. The governance does not only involve multiple levels of the state, the Japanese nuclear vendor or the National Grid play also key parts in defining governance in spatial terms. The spatial definition of the affected publics is in the centre of the controversies with specific regards to transboundary environmental effects and employment catchment area. The examples highlight how the definitions and conflicts around geographical scale are in the very core of making energy futures on Anglesey.

Paper long abstract:

Our paper explores how uses of electricity might be re-configured through the design of new interfaces between the grid and its users. Smart metering, flexibility, demand response, smart appliances… All this terms have been recently linked to "smart grids" and mark the possible advent of consumer engagement into grid management. Consumers remain, however, one of the main unknowns of smart grid future. They are often considered as important actors, although it is not clear how this "material participation" (Marres 2012) would occur.

In order to analyse the solidarities between users and electricity grids, we consider electricity as an actor-network. Electricity is materialised and made possible via a wide range of infrastructures and institutions. The grid consists of a multitude of actors who have each a role defined. The advent of smart grids redistributes the roles of all these actors. From the end user perspective, electricity flows invisibly, although it makes possible a series of actions and practices. Making electricity "visible" mean to unfold the network that compounds it, and to highlight relevant elements.

The paper will present results from co-design sessions in which users have been enabled to configure what are the relevant solidarities with the electricity grid. In our co-design sessions we have adopted a bottom-up approach that allows us to investigate new solidarities, beyond the common units of kWh and Euros. The role of the interface is to enable the user to become an actor of the grid reconfiguration. Therefore, the interface translates a broad socio-technical network, reflecting the electricity grid infrastructure and its current state.

Paper long abstract:

Issues like climate change and the accident in Fukushima, changes in the geo-strategic, economic and technological landscape as well as new political ideas such as sustainable development have set the energy systems of many countries in motion. In society and politics, these dynamics have fostered the emergence of new and old conflicts around energy technologies that challenge the effectiveness and legitimacy of governance regimes.

While some countries face these dynamics in terms of rather incremental business as usual approaches, other countries have undertaken efforts to set up encompassing energy transition strategies to foster comprehensive transformations of their energy systems towards more sustainable ones. These strategies tend to be debated and analyzed in terms of their effectiveness, whereas their interplay with societal conflicts remains conceptually and empirically underexplored.

With our paper we strive to shed some more light on the relationship between energy related controversies and political approaches to a strategic governance of energy transitions. What role do controversies and conflicts around new and old energy technologies play in strategically governed energy transitions? And how are these conflicts taken into account by comprehensive energy strategies?

To address these questions, we first propose some conceptual ideas for combining conflict analysis with the analysis of strategic governance. Secondly, we illustrate our conceptual considerations by interpreting the role of energy-related conflicts in the strategically governed energy transition in Germany. Finally, we sketch some prospects and limitations of a more integrated analytical perspective on the relationship between conflicts and the strategic governance of energy transitions.

Paper long abstract:

This intervention analyzes energy scenarios in West German expertise as sociotechnical objects contributing to define boundaries between scientific and political questions (Gieryn, 1995, Jasanoff, 1987) and policy instruments (Lascoumes et Le Galès, 2005) structuring energy policy and its underlying actor-coalitions. We follow the emergence of transition scenarios (Energiewendeszenarien) in German energy discourse in the 1980s, and their claim to discursive hegemony since 1998. Initially based on abandonment of nuclear energy and its replacement by energy savings and decentralized renewables, transition scenarios themselves changed in the process of institutionalization, losing some of their more radical implications. By retracing this history, we aim at showing that scenarios, despite their origin in technocratic and planning circles, can lead to a pluralization of visions of energy futures. We also show that such phenomena are closely tied to the general social and political context. The communication will discuss these subjects through in-depth analysis of two aspects: 1) the making of relevant scenarios in research institutes and parliamentary committees, and 2) the role, function and circulation of scenarios. The practices of scenario-making will be elucidated through ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with actors. The discursive role and trajectory of scenarios will be investigated through discourse analysis (newspapers and parliamentary debates).

Paper long abstract:

The economist William Stanley Jevons' claim that increased energy efficiency increases net energy-use in a given system - rather than acting to conserve it, has re-emerged in numerous controversies regarding the effects of energy efficiency policy. This paper attempts to trace the historical genealogy of Jevons' paradox from its origins, as a response to the Victorian era's liberalisation of trade, to today, where it has become of growing concern to contemporary policy-makers, as, if proven, it serves to undermine the rationale underlying the prevailing mode of governing energy resources, that is via increases in efficiency. Tracing the genealogy of the paradox takes us through the miners' strikes (1912-1972), and the energy crisis of 1973-1979, where in both instances the dynamics implied by the paradox had direct political implications. Later, between 1978 and 1989, the privatisation of energy markets in the UK and the de-regulation of US energy markets led to resurgence in interest in the paradox, as advocates of deregulation suggested a diametrically opposite dynamic to that proposed by Jevons. In tracing this genealogy, sociology of science's concern with controversies is reconciled with an historical approach. A further theoretical insight is offered, in terms of epistemology Jevons' paradox exemplifies what Niklas Luhmann (2002) has referred to as productive capacities of paradox, in that via self-referential confirmation, paradox asserts the legitimacy of new knowledge.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyses the controversies arising from technology and knowledge exchange in unconventional energy development, focusing on the 'Enefit' oil shale company in Estonia and its recent concession agreements in Jordan and Utah, US. Drawing upon STS research on innovation and socio-technical controversies, I take issue with the unilinear vision of technology development and 'technology transfer' that is popularized by the industry, and highlight instead the precarious and contested nature of the 'Enefit' retort along its travels between the three states. The difficulties of translating the Estonian technical expertise to other locations reveal that rather than being simply the result of displacement and up-scaled production, the prospects of expanded shale oil production depend on the industry's ability to form new associations between capricious machinery, heterogeneous resource materials and shifting energy conventions, being thus prone to public interrogation and failure. Indeed, the company's interventions in Jordan and Utah have given rise to heated disputes over whether the retorting technology actually "works", whether it would be "economic" for the technology to work, and at what price and socio-ecological costs this can be achieved. These controversies evidence multi-faceted and multi-directional travels of materials and knowledge, during which both recipient and donor industries are transformed and opportunities for new energy collectives are opened up.