ABSTRACT
This book has examined the visions, fantasies, expectations, and rhetoric associated with six state-of-the-art energy systems—shale gas, clean coal, nuclear power, hydrogen fuel cells, smart meters, and electric vehicles—playing a key role in current deliberations about low-carbon energy supply and use. Theoretically, the book has evaluated these technological or sociotechnical case studies with emerging concepts from various disciplines: technological frames (social construction of technology), discursive coalitions (discourse analysis and linguistics), utopianism (history of technology), symbolic convergence (communication studies), imaginaries (science and technology studies), and expectations (innovation studies, futures studies). Spatially and contextually, we see visions with these energy systems at play nationally in South Africa and the United Kingdom, regionally in Eastern Europe and the Nordic countries, and globally in the two epistemic communities of nuclear physicists and hydrogen engineers as well as various members of different public communities. Despite such a diversity of technologies, cases, and communities, there is a commonality to low-carbon fantasies and visions that is more systematically examined in this concluding chapter. Here, the theoretical approaches utilized in each of the previous chapters are examined and compared, and the empirical results synthesized. Empirically, visions tend to differ by the problem addressed and function, storylines and cues, valence and contradiction, experiential subject, temporality, and degree of change. Conceptually, approaches can be juxtaposed in terms of their emphasis on structure, agency, or meaning, as well as their underlying assumptions. These conceptual and empirical differences can be mapped onto distinct dichotomies. The chapter ends by teasing out the book’s broader conclusions and policy implications.
