Nakopoulou, Efi (Ravelijn (NL) University of Twente)
Governing and designing emerging energy technologies in a multi-crises world: towards responsible and just futures
Authors: Efi Nakopoulou, Kornelia Konrad, Stathis Arapostathis
Keywords: governance of emerging energy technologies, responsible technology design, just futures, multi-crises, multi-regime dynamics/interactions.
Abstract
Our societies are facing multiple, overlapping crises, such as climate, energy, raw materials, geopolitical, biodiversity crises and more. While each crisis may mobilize political support to address the related problems, the perceived urgency can also distract from paying attention to possible ‘secondary’ effects for other crises. This leads to the paradoxical situation that overlapping crises require holistic solutions and synergies between and across policies, while they may at the same time discourage them. This track invites contributions that study the design, formation and governance of emerging energy technologies (e.g. novel solar photovoltaic concepts, hydrogen etc.), which are shrouded with uncertainty, with a view on how these technologies can contribute to addressing multiple crises and problems, or at least consciously navigate them.
Some of the tensions that are increasingly recognized are trade-offs between performance and efficiency of renewables versus their use of critical raw materials and the related justice questions. Visions of a global green hydrogen economy aim to mitigate climate change, but raise questions about geopolitics and the just distribution of burdens and benefits of large-scale projects, particularly in the Global South. Multi-sector/regime technologies as agrivoltaics or solar photovoltaic technologies for integrated building need not only to attend to challenges related to the climate crises, but also interrelate with biodiversity and housing crises.
We are interested in studies that approach energy technologies from a multi-crises and/or multi-sector perspective both from a governance and from an innovation and design perspective. Furthermore, we welcome studies that take a historical and/or future-oriented perspective. Firstly, historically informed empirical studies and analyses have the explanatory power to inform the present situation (why specific pathways are chosen and not others, why this is happening now and why does it have these specific characteristics), while providing insights regarding current policies and multi-regime dynamics. Moreover, these studies can inform and/or provide a deeper understanding regarding the dynamics and politics of emergence. Secondly, we are interested in combining these studies with futures studies, especially in relation to innovations and technologies that are in-the-making but that can also yield insights regarding policies (how certain policies may enable or disable cross-sectoral innovations and policies).
Contributions that combine and/or bring together insights from both the RRI and justice literatures are particularly welcome, as well as papers that focus and/or examine multi-regime interactions – with a focus on emerging (energy) technologies.
We welcome contributions from researchers of all career stages. Questions of particular interest and relevance to the track include, but are not limited to, the following:
• How can we support the design of emerging (energy) technologies and innovations towards holistically addressing the challenges and crises they are meant to solve and/or respond to?
• What are (current) limitations or restrictions (research, material, knowledge etc.), preventing the design of such emerging technologies or preventing from (further) embodying the justice tenets in the design of emerging technologies? Especially, in the design of what can be referred to as ‘responsible’ technologies, which aim to incorporate the principles of the justice literature?
• What insights can we offer as to how the design of such technologies may look like, especially for emerging technologies that transcend the boundaries of a single sector or regime (e.g. agrivoltaics)?
• What changes are needed (at the policy level), in order to make way // create room for emerging technologies that can provide more holistic solutions?
• How can we foster cross-sectoral policy collaborations and/or synergies?
Analyses that focus on specific localities, enabling empirical insights from concrete cases, are particularly welcomed.