Expanding the scope and implications of energy research: A guide to key themes and concepts from the Social Sciences and Humanities

2020

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This chapter zooms out from looking at concrete pilot projects to looking more broadly at the implications of discussions on pilot projects as sites of politics. We discuss how such a perspective might feed into the work of innovators, funding bodies and the making of broader technology policy agendas. The chapter highlights the great potential in pilot projects as a mode of innovation for energy transitions, but bring to the fore the way such innovation activities often take on traditional and technology-centred characteristics. We argue that there is a need to change not only the ways that projects are funded to ensure diverse scientific participation. It is equally important to challenge the underlying assumptions and questions asked in pilot activities, as well as the goals of such energy transition activities. This entails a distributed agenda, where actors across the ecology of innovation share responsibilities for moving towards more just, democratic and humane modes of experimenting for sustainability.

“…e.g. Ingeborgrud et al 2020;Sovacool 2014;Sovacool et al 2020). Examples are manifold and rich within the literature on energy justice (e.g.…”

Section: Transforming the Innovation Practices Of Pilot Projectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Challenge Of the Social: Socio-technical Asymmetries Inmentioning

confidence: 99%

Catering for Socio-technical Transformations: Rethinking Technology Policy for Inclusive Transformation

2020

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“…Demand response technologies and services are a key element of the smart grid, typically seeking to influence the timing and intensity of energy demand. Common examples include time of use (TOU) tariffs, critical peak pricing, feedback technologies and automated demand controllers (Ingeborgrud et al 2020;Torriti 2015). Adding complexity to these discussions are new technological developments for instance within battery technology, that suggests batteries from electric vehicles or stand-alone batteries might play an increasingly important role in providing flexibility (see e.g.…”

Section: The Empirical Field: a Brief Look On Trends And Developmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transforming Society Through Pilot and Demonstration Projects

2020

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This chapter introduces pilot and demonstration projects as a key mode of innovation within contemporary energy and mobility transitions. It argues that such projects are important political sites for the production of future socio-technical order. The politics of such projects are contested: on the one hand, they have been argued to remove political agency from deliberative fora in favour of private decisions, on the other hand they have been argued to constitute new democratic opportunities. This chapter situates a discussion on these issues within Science and Technology Studies (STS). The chapter further discusses the relationship between STS and some of the currently dominating approaches to sustainability transitions and argues how STS can bring new insights to the study of energy transitions and societal change. The chapter also provides basic insights into some key social and technical aspects of current energy and mobility transitions.

“…Funding bodies increasingly also demand that technology developers take measures to include knowledge from technology users in new projects. This is reflected more broadly in European energy policy, which highlights that a key goal of the energy transition is to make future energy systems 'citizen centric' (Ingeborgrud et al 2020). Yet, citizenship promoted through such rhetoric tends to be reduced to finding new ways of making people act as rational agents in economic markets (e.g.…”

Section: The Orchestration Of Participation In Pilot and Demonstratiomentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The concept of energy citizenship exemplifies the growing strand of research, arguing that energy transitions require active citizen participation and not only passive acceptance (Ingeborgrud et al 2020). Adding to this, we bring the concept of material participation from STS into this discussion (Marres 2016).…”

Section: Energy Citizenship As Meansmentioning

confidence: 99%

Democratic and Participatory Pilot Projects?

2020

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This chapter starts from the normative assumption that since pilot projects are key sites in the shaping of future societies, it is essential that they are conducted in an inclusive and democratic way. Building on key perspectives from STS, we focus on two aspects: First, we consider participation as an orchestrated and distributed phenomenon, highlighting the fact that the way actors participate in such innovation activities will be shaped by technologies, assumptions and the work of a series of actors related to pilot projects. Consequently, we also note how new forms of participation can be actively nurtured. Second, we explore the role of technologies in shaping material participation. Here, we explore how material traits might produce new forms of awareness, knowledge or literacy, and new practices or action, amounting to what we call energy citizenship.