1 Introduction
In their concluding statement to the recent Paris scientific conference, ‘Our common future under Climate Change (OFCC)’ (July 2015), which preceded the CoP 21, scientists from around the world acknowledged our entrance into a new phase of climate change issues. Climate change and the 2 °C threshold are now considered (firm) scientific facts and the time has come to explore actual solutions for greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation. The recent Paris Agreement has confirmed the advent of a time of action, of which energy transitions are part.
Our approach to these energy transitions has itself been transformed. The devising of energy futures through multiple and sometimes diverging scenarios has come to be superseded by discussions about the timing, tuning and financing of long-term investments in order to develop new energy/mitigation technologies in time. As increasing climate change casts its shadow of urgency over the negotiations, it steers our attention to ‘scalable’ (big) solutions. Large-scale technologies such as carbon capture and storage, nuclear or even (on- and offshore) wind power, driven by market actors, are presented as the main, if not the sole, road to success. ‘Scalable’ solutions, however, are contested. As such, they testify to a contemporary democratic deadlock by which the urgency of the climate issue cuts short collective negotiations on the social goals of energy transition (Stengers 2009). In many respects, social scientists are expected to find ways of alleviating what have been called ‘acceptance issues’, implying that the charge of resolution is in the hands of a recalcitrant public rather than in the recasting of transition projects or in a better understanding of the democratic deadlock.
1.1 A Democratic Deadlock
A large spectrum of social science approaches has been interested in issues of energy transition. Normative approaches take transition agendas as given and look for ways of surmounting barriers to their implementation (e.g. social psychology, cultural approaches; Sarrica et al. 2014). Critical approaches explore the framing behind techno-politics (Wolsink 2012, on smart grids; Aitken 2010, on wind power; Markusson et al. 2012, on carbon capture and storage; Willow and Wylie 2014, on fracking). While a large array of critical perspectives has been developed (Gailing and Moss 2016; Geels 2010), they often result in a straightforward application of an analytical framework to the object of energy transition, without necessarily entering the (messy) field of energy transition processes and reviving the type of criticisms that could be expected. Calls for more critical approaches to the democratic dimension of energy transitions are still relevant (Stirling 2014a, b), and the question of the possible effect of ‘energy transition’ as a field of inquiry on the social sciences remains open. Differently stated, if we assume that disciplinary framings prevent us from fully addressing the democratic deadlock we are currently facing, how can we devise our inquiry so as to explore anew the matter of energy transition processes and re-conceptualise the critical issues underlying these processes? This first displacement—from ‘criticism’ to the ‘critical’—calls for a strategy that connects the democratic challenge to a renewed scientific inquiry.
The recent success of ‘meso’ approaches to technological change—the multilevel perspective (MLP) approaches to energy transition (Geels and Kemp 2007; Geels and Schot 2007)—and the debate they have triggered, illustrate the dominance of criticism. MLP has itself come under strong criticism for its lack of spatialisation and politicisation (Coenen et al. 2012) and of social and cultural dimensions (Sarrica et al. 2014, p. 3). The limits of this framework do not, however, result only from lack of openness to the work of the social sciences: Geels (2010) has argued for the potential of MLP to develop interfaces with a number of other approaches in social sciences. Rather, the limitations seem to ensue from the self-framing as a rational effort to translate transition processes into a strategic (goals/means) management issue. The proposal for the strategic management of technologies (means) in order progressively to meet the social demands results in placing democracy in the hands of policy makers, firms and engineers. Moreover, the [related] focus on newness (innovation as the predominant issue) and the representation of the existing world as a socio-technical regime (inertia as a correlate issue) cast a shadow over both the realm of experience in which the transition is to be embedded and the consequences of technological development for this experience. Democratic issues ensue because the ways in which energy change processes are experienced and the capacity for people or milieux to take part in these processes are neither acknowledged nor represented. A ‘critical field’ of democratic issues builds up and lies in the midst of the dominant instrumental reasoning, as if it was concealed by it.
1.2 An Inquiry
In this book, ‘inquiry’ is a loaded word. It refers to a material as well as to an approach and a role for the social sciences.
First, ‘inquiry’ refers to a related material. This book is an attempt at reopening our socio-technical exploration of energy transition processes thanks to a large set of empirical case studies. This material stems from a five-year research project. 1 Five years ago in France, the phrase ‘energy transition’ was becoming a buzzword in both policy and academic circles. This enticed us to go back to empirical descriptions of processes of energy change, with the aim of critically addressing the performative dimension of ‘energy transition’. This meant grasping energy change processes within an encompassing perspective that would allow us to capture the framing of the transition at work—for instance, what it did to the ways in which energy changes were undertaken and the social implications of this way of doing things. Returning to the field was thus a way to broaden and reopen our questioning about energy transition processes. We decided to approach these processes from different angles—local, national or transnational—and through a large set of empirical objects—seven medium-scale technologies were covered by about 30 different case studies.
Secondly, ‘inquiry’ points to an approach in social sciences. Inquiry is an idea in and a method of the social sciences that derives from the pragmatist tradition (Dewey 1939, 1946, 2008). Inquiry starts with attention to the consequences of (energy) activities for actors and entities that are affected by them but that are neither part of them nor at the origin of their undertaking. It devotes specific attention to the ways in which this often heterogeneous and unorganised set of affected actors (called a ‘public’) attempts, and in certain cases succeeds, in collectively articulating the interferences they experience and turning them into shared concerns that must be acknowledged. As a method, inquiry emphasises the exploration of multiple worlds and degrees of (non) implication in relation to energy change processes. It explores a ‘critical’ realm at the core of energy change processes, ‘critical’ because it plays a key role in these processes, though tenuous, hardly discussed and acknowledged. Inquiry is also an alternative to the goal/means instrumental dialectic, since goals (shared concerns) are seen to emerge along with processes of change, t...