ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the sociotechnical dimension of wind power technology and of various types of commons involved, assembled and re-composed in its development. It aims to defend the idea that concern for the social and situated dimension of wind power development and due processes can endow wind power with the property of being a renewable energy. The chapter presents cases of renewable and non-renewable wind power developments in three parts of France – Aveyron, Seine et Marne, Narbonnaise – and focuses on conditions for wind power to be developed as a renewable energy. It also discusses the results emphasising the importance of accounting for the material and relational dimension of wind energy. The chapter provides the constructed nature of wind power potential, in order to introduce the reader to a human geography of wind power. Wind power development could exhaust itself by affecting and exhausting for a long time the energies of the local inhabitants.