19: Positioning renewable energy systems as building blocks of a better world (Martin Stienstra, Amanda Elam, Ewert Aukes, Joy Clancy)
In this track we contribute to an understanding of how STI governance and policy can address justice and equality, and injustice and inequality. We do this by exploring the notion of a better world as one that is free of anthropogenic environmental and human disasters linked to a changing climate. Policymakers and scientists perceive a solution to climate change is the transition away from fossil fuels to alternative energy sources. However, we consider that this transition is not a simple matter of substituting one piece of energy hardware for another. Drawing on Rip and Kemp (1998), we define technology as a configuration of physical resources, knowledge, and people. This socio-technical stance implies that technology is not neutral: it has environmental political, social, and economic impacts. In finding a solution to a problem such as climate change, ‘social groups’ engage in a struggle over what constitutes ‘the problem’ and which technology constitutes a ‘solution’ to that problem. Such interpretive struggles lead to a stabilised form of the problem and solution when ‘accepted facts’ emerge. Viewing technology development in this way reveals that the interactions between social groups are riddled with power asymmetries which lead to energy injustices, in part, determining for whom and how the energy transition will create a better world. This track focuses on the intersectionality dimension of energy justice and its wider social, political, and economic implications. We propose to further explore and update the role of producers and users in designing and governing energy system technologies as significant (f)actors in creating a better world. However, producers and users are not two homogeneous groups but consist of a range of groups characterized by intersections of socio-economic characteristics such as gender, age, sexual orientation, and ethnicity. These characteristics influence for whom the energy transition creates a better world. Understanding the social infrastructures of energy systems together with the role of intersectionality in their co-construction allows for policy-oriented implications for creating a better world to emerge. The existing knowledge about gender in energy systems is largely codified in non-academic literature. Intersectionality receives even less attention. This indicates a need to increase the scientific body of knowledge as a complementary to everyday knowledge and experiences which will help create a more gender-equitable energy transition, which we consider contributes to a better world. We argue, as researchers from different disciplines who have explored the role of producers and users in the energy system, that no single discipline working alone can provide the answers to such a complex problem. Instead, a trans-disciplinary approach, together with critical knowledge frames, provides a more holistic understanding of and identification of solutions to a more socially just energy transition and a better world. To contribute to that understanding and help guide us to socially just solutions, in this track, we propose a dual format in which scholars first present papers based on novel methodological approaches and under-utilised disciplines and conclude with a plenary discussion led by the proposers.
Keywords: energy transition, gender, intersectionality, trans-disciplinary research approaches