Germany’s Energiewende is often considered a role model for the transition to renewable energy. It enjoys broad multiparty and multi-sector commitment as a central national project, notwithstanding some domestic disputes about prices, infrastructures, and timeframes. However, Russia’s war against Ukraine marks a turning point in Germany’s energy politics, given the country’s dependency on Russian natural gas. This paper examines the war’s repercussions on Germany’s energy transition discourse. It draws on an analysis of newspaper articles, tweets, talk shows, and parliamentary speeches from February to May 2022, i.e. shortly after the beginning of the 2022 Russian war against Ukraine. The goal of quickly reducing fossil fuel imports from Russia has reframed controversies about renewable energy and centered the geopolitical dimension of the Energiewende. The Energiewende is no longer framed primarily as a domestic climate protection policy, but rather an explicitly geopolitical problem. We discuss the re-evaluation of Germany’s past energy policies, energy savings to reduce fossil fuel dependence, the role of bridging technologies such as LNG, lignite, and nuclear power, and new framings of the Energiewende as a matter of freedom and national security. While the war seems to have strengthened political commitments to the energy transition, it is also used to justify renewed investments in fossil infrastructures, potentially exacerbating the existing carbon lock-in. Furthermore, both an accelerated expansion of renewable energies and the short-term substitution of Russian gas will likely create new geopolitical interdependencies and challenges that are potentially in conflict with the new discursive emphasis on national security and independence.
Abstract. This article examines the constitution of affective
atmospheres that arise through the encounter of scientific and theatre
practices. Using an autoethnographic approach, the presented work focuses on
a collaborative theatre project on the climate crisis. Here, the author
performed in the role of a scientific expert next to colleagues that have a
climate change-related research background. Three aspects of affective
atmospheres emerging in the rehearsal process are analysed: one's position
in the interplay of powerful materialities, the relationality of sensual
bodies, and the (in)stability of scientific identities. This paper shows
that the artistic collaboration opens up space for reflecting on science
that seek to overcome ostensible dualisms of subject/object, mind/body, and
reason/emotion. It emphasizes the opportunity of art to bring into account
body, more-than-humanity and relationality as part of scientific practices
in times of anthropocentric debates facing climate change.
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