Abstract
To implement EU climate policy, the UK’s New Labour government (1997–2010) elaborated an ecomodernist policy framework. It promoted technological innovation to provide low-carbon renewable energy, especially by treating waste as a resource. This framework discursively accommodated rival sociotechnical imaginaries, understood as visions of feasible and desirable futures available through technoscientific development. According to the dominant imaginary, techno-market fixes stimulate low-carbon technologies by making current centralized systems more resource-efficient (as promoted by industry incumbents). According to the alternative eco-localization imaginary, a shift to low-carbon systems should instead localize resource flows, output uses and institutional responsibility (as promoted by civil society groups). The UK government policy framework gained political authority by accommodating both imaginaries. As we show by drawing on three case studies, the realization of both imaginaries depended on institutional changes and material-economic resources of distinctive kinds. In practice, financial incentives drove technological design towards trajectories that favour the dominant sociotechnical imaginary, while marginalizing the eco-localization imaginary and its environmental benefits. The ecomodernist policy framework relegates responsibility to anonymous markets, thus displacing public accountability of the state and industry. These dynamics indicate the need for STS research on how alternative sociotechnical imaginaries mobilize support for their realization, rather than be absorbed into the dominant imaginary.
Highlights
Techno-fixes as policy agendasDebates about climate change pit incumbent high-carbon systems against more desirable low-carbon replacements
To explore techno-market fixes, this paper compares how the UK government has promoted technoscientific solutions for bioenergy and for waste-energy issues. To analyse the latter in greater detail, this article discusses the following questions: What have been the different visions of societal futures? How did each one link technological solutions with institutional arrangements? How did the UK policy framework relate to the different visions? How did anticipatory efforts gain epistemic authority for some visions rather than others? How did waste-energy outcomes relate to earlier promises of benefits, and with what accountability?
Focusing on UK low-carbon waste-energy agendas, we asked: What have been the different visions of societal futures? And how did each vision link technological change with institutional arrangements? How did the policy framework relate to the different visions? We approached these questions through sociotechnical and economic imaginaries, paying particular attention to how alternatives seek to contest dominant hierarchies (Jasanoff, 2015; Tidwell and Tidwell, 2018)
Summary
Debates about climate change pit incumbent high-carbon systems against more desirable low-carbon replacements. At a global and national level, states have promoted market instruments as a necessary means to stimulate such technologies This market-driven agenda has been personified by Nicholas Stern since his report, The Economics of Climate Change, emphasizing that ‘policy must promote sound market signals’ for low-carbon development (Stern, 2006: i). To explore techno-market fixes, this paper compares how the UK government has promoted technoscientific solutions for bioenergy and for waste-energy issues. To analyse the latter in greater detail, this article discusses the following questions: What have been the different visions of societal futures? MBT to generate RDF for EfW plants → electricity substituting for fossil fuels → a global good (energy company vision). MBT-CLO plants have had operational difficulties for reliable outputs
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