Understanding Transition—Periphery Dynamics: Renewable Energy in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland

Abstract

Over the coming decades the Highlands and Islands of Scotland will be transformed as new technologies and infrastructures are installed to exploit wind, wave and tide power.However, interactions between the region -understood as a sociospatial category shaped by history, culture and institutions -and these technologies are poorly understood and need to be appreciated in more detail before the changes gather momentum. In this paper we link and extend research around socio-technical transitions and resource peripheries and use this framework to analyse wind energy projects on the island of Lewis. Our analysis draws attention to transition-periphery dynamics and the ways in which renewable energy projects and particular locations are co-shaping each other through these. Building on this case study we suggest implications for the region as a whole, argue that the analytical-normative agenda of socio-technical transitions should be recast, and highlight the need for more research on socio-technical transitions and new resource peripheries.

Beyond Rhetoric to Understanding Determinants of Wind Turbine Support and Conflict in Two Ontario, Canada Communities

“…Our findings support the growing evidence, including another Ontario study (Baxter et al, 2013), that sharing of financial and other tangible benefits among households in the vicinity of local turbines predicts turbine support (Bolinger, 2005;Murphy and Smith, 2013;Walker and Devine-Wright, 2008;Warren and McFadyen, 2010). The interviews again provide important subtlety, in the sense that being happy for former tobacco fanners who lease land to turbine developers need not be interpreted as a rejection of the idea that neighbours should also get a share of profits (Ellis et al, 2007).…”

The geography of socio‐technical transitions: Transition–periphery dynamics

“…Very limited work has been done specifically to connect and extend the concepts of socio‐technical transitions and resource peripheries. Murphy and Smith () have begun this work with an application of these concepts to three wind energy projects on the island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides archipelago in Scotland. Complex processes and the spatial unevenness of transitions can be uncovered by examining geographical aspects of transitions (Coenen & Truffer, ; Coenen et al., ).…”

“…It has been noted in the literature that socio‐technical transitions research has tended to neglect the importance of geography until relatively recently (Coenen et al., ; Hansen & Coenen, ; Lawhon & Murphy, ; Murphy, ). This geographical aspect is crucial because it allows for better understandings of why transitions tend to occur unevenly across space (Lawhon & Murphy, ).…”

Transnational linkages in sustainability experiments: A typology and the case of solar photovoltaic energy in India

“…This relatively young body of literature has been developing in three lines (Truffer et al, 2015;Hansen and Coenen, 2014). A major line of research is concerned with local and regional contexts, and the ways in which innovation and transition processes co-evolve with and transform these contexts (Murphy and Smith, 2013). In particular, research on city contexts has received considerable attention (Bulkeley et al, 2011).…”