Abstract
Based on an extensive synthesis of semi-structured interviews, media content analysis, and reviews, this article conducts a qualitative meta-analysis of more than 560 sources of evidence to identify 38 visions associated with seven different low-carbon innovations – automated mobility, electric vehicles, smart meters, nuclear power, shale gas, hydrogen, and the fossil fuel divestment movement – playing a key role in current deliberations about mobility or low-carbon energy supply and use. From this material, it analyzes such visions based on rhetorical features such as common problems and functions, storylines, discursive struggles, and rhetorical effectiveness. It also analyzes visions based on typologies or degrees of valence (utopian vs. dystopian), temporality (proximal vs. distant), and radicalism (incremental vs. transformative). The article is motivated by the premise that tackling climate change via low-carbon energy systems (and practices) is one of the most significant challenges of the twenty-first century, and that effective decarbonization will require not only new energy technologies, but also new ways of understanding language, visions, and discursive politics surrounding emerging innovations and transitions.
Highlights
Visions and narratives of energy futures have become a powerful force in research, being present in the construction of energy and climate scenarios, forecasts, and policy analysis (O’Neill et al, 2017; Sovacool, 2019)
Our evidence revealed 38 visions and 14 ideographs circulating across a mere seven lowcarbon innovations dealing with mobility or energy
Many visions are contextually specific to the innovation being examined, such as the educated trucker, the reluctant and anxious consumer, families in turmoil, nuclear seagulls and kids, energy authoritarianism, ubiquitous hydrogen economy, and the carbon bubble
Summary
Visions and narratives of energy futures have become a powerful force in research, being present in the construction of energy and climate scenarios, forecasts, and policy analysis (O’Neill et al, 2017; Sovacool, 2019). The article is inherently cross-technological in its examination of visions, looking at low-carbon technologies across the domains of electricity supply, transport and mobility, industry, and household energy use It is spatially and temporally comparative, examining several specific geographic contexts where such visions and narratives play out: nationally in the United Kingdom, regionally in Eastern Europe, and globally in the epistemic communities connected to nuclear power, divestment, and automated mobility. Visions are limited by ideological constraints, but they can embrace specific interpretations of our collective agreements in efforts to provide alternative views of potential futures To make those visions more appealing to people who tend to embrace narrative decision-making processes, fantasies use drama to tether the visions to dramas and recurring themes with which people identify.
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