Controversies around energy landscapes in third modernity

Abstract

Transitions towards renewable energy sources are changing landscapes in many respects and causing controversies over legitimate landscape governance. The paper investigates these trends by examining the production of energy landscapes as multifaceted processes of ‘cosmopolitics’, which inevitably generate landscape controversies. It sketches such co-constructive processes under various governance constellations. In case studies from Bavaria (Germany), the controversies could be traced back to conflicting patterns of justification beyond industrial certainties of ‘first modernity’. These controversies cannot be fully understood if we see them as conflicts about siting decisions; instead, we need in-depth inquiry into socio-eco-technical co-constructions and ways of reshaping them. The paper looks at whether such controversies can be considered as typical elements of reflexive governance in ‘second modernity’, or whether they point to a post-political production of energy landscapes on the way towards ‘third modernity’, a governance constellation in which ecological and democratic claims are merely simulated.