Carbon reduction, ‘the public’ and renewable energy: engaging with socio-technical...

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(2007) 39.4, 458469

Area

Vol. 39 No. 4, pp. 458469, 2007ISSN 0004-0894 The Authors.

Journal compilation Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2007

Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Carbon reduction, the public and renewable energy: engaging with socio-technical

configurations

Gordon Walker and Noel Cass

Department of Geography, Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YQ

Email: [email protected]

Revised manuscript received 6 July 2007

In the context of challenging targets for renewable energy generation, this paper drawsout social implications of moves towards low carbon energy systems. As renewableenergy develops as a heterogeneous category, many potential forms of social relationbetween publics and technologies are emerging. Utilising perspectives from scienceand technology studies, we outline five modes in which renewable energy has beenimplemented in the UK and how these involve different configurations of technology andsocial organisation. We argue that a multiplicity of roles for the public are implicatedacross this increasingly complex landscape, cutting across established categories andraising questions of meaning, differentiation, interrelation and access. Policy assumptionsand conceptions are questioned, highlighting that dominant characterisations of publicroles have been part of a concentration on particular socio-technical pathways to theexclusion of others.

Key words:

renewable energy, public, socio-technical configurations, UK

Introduction

It has become increasingly clear that to make themajor carbon reductions being called for to mitigatefuture climate change there will need to be movestowards energy systems that incorporate a far greateruse of renewable energy technologies (Stern 2007;European Union Council 2007). Such emergingenergy systems will, at least in the medium term,take a hybrid form, with large-scale coal, gas andnuclear generation operated alongside more distributedand multi-scaled configurations of renewable energytechnologies. What this might imply for technicalengineering, regulation and market performance isbeing increasingly discussed in the academic andpolicy literatures (e.g. Pehnt

et al.

2006; Sauter andWatson 2007; Willis 2006). However, there are alsoprofound social and geographical implicationsembedded within emerging patterns of renewable

energy utilisation that need to be examined,understood and assessed in relation to current andfuture renewable energies policy. Our particularconcern here is with the relations between renewableenergy technologies and the public cast in variousguises and groups (Walker 1999) and the multipleroles and forms of engagement that are beingproduced as the social organisation of renewableenergy technologies evolves and differentiates.

In this paper we draw on perspectives developedin science and technology studies to consider howchanges in the deployment of renewable energy inthe UK require a far more embedded and multidi-mensional conceptualisation of the roles, engagementsand potentiality of the public within the energysystem. We show how as renewable energy developsas a heterogeneous category of multiple sites, scalesand forms, and as more distributed systems ofprovision and co-provision emerge (Van Vliet

et al.

Carbon reduction, the public and renewable energy

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2005), various forms of geography are being con-structed and many potential forms of social relationand engagement between publics and technologiesare being brought forward.

We begin with a discussion of key literature andconcepts before outlining a framework for charac-terising different configurations of renewable energytechnologies and the elements of social organisationinvolved in their deployment. We then analyse howdifferent socio-technical configurations encompassvarious roles for the public and the consequencesfor policy and research which this implies.

Socio-technical systems and infrastructures

In order to develop our analysis of the changingpatterns of renewable energy implementation inthe UK, we draw from literature in science andtechnology studies which conceives technologiesnot simply as designed and engineered materialobjects, but as embedded components of socio-technical systems in which producers, infrastructures,users, consumers, regulators and other intermediariesare all embroiled (Bijker

et al.

1987; Coutard 1999;Elzen

et al.

2004). Under such a conceptualisationthe technical and the social are co-constitutive,continually interacting and shaping each other withexchanges in both directions (Bijker and Law 1992).Accordingly, we can conceive renewable energytechnologies not simply as a series of engineeredartefacts performing energy conversions, but asconfigurations of the social and technical whichhave emerged contingently in particular contexts andwhich mirror wider social, economic and technicalrelations and processes.

A key part of understanding the dynamics of thesocio-technical is to focus on the relationshipsbetween an object and surrounding actors, including,importantly for our analysis, the public as users,consumers, customers etc. (Akrich 1992). Technologyand system developers ascribe imagined roles foractors which they may or may not take up andspaces in which they may or may not operate(Bijker 1995). These actors in turn can devise theirown roles and alternative meanings for objectsthat have interpretive flexibility in how they areunderstood and represented (Law and Callon 1987).Understanding how changes in socio-technicalsystems take place therefore requires an analysis thatrecognises the interactive roles of multiple actorsat different scales of activity (Elzen and Wieczorek2005), the structural factors and distributions of

power and agency that promote and constrainpotential trajectories (Klein and Kleinmann 2002),and the politics of everyday practice (Shove 2003)in which technologies are implicated. In each ofthese respects the public as actors in differentgroups, guises and roles can be embroiled.

For infrastructural technologies (water, energy,transport etc.) such conceptualisations have informedanalysis of the ways in which the often hidden andmundane services of everyday life are provided andhow systems of provision have evolved over time(Hughes 1983; Schwartz Cowan 1987; Southerton

et al.

2004; Shove 2003). Recent trends, it has beenargued, have the potential for radical transformationof established infrastructural ideals as urban spacesand related socio-technical infrastructures fracture andreform (Graham and Marvin 2001; Coutard 2005).This opens up possibilities for the development ofgreener modes and systems of provision in whichnew forms of interaction between utilities and con-sumers are developed, new intermediaries becomeinvolved and new patterns of differentiation andco-provisioning can emerge (Van Vliet 2002; VanVliet

et al.

2005). The specific possibilities presentedby distributed renewable energy generation havebeen part of the tracing of innovative sustainablesocio-technical configurations in this literature (VanVliet 2002; Chappells 2003), including analysis ofhow radically new consumerproducer relations andinteractions may emerge. Our objective in this paperis to apply elements of this analysis more systematicallyto the evolving UK context so as to provide a moredifferentiated view of the roles for publics thatare being produced and an initial exploration of thepolicy implications arising from these understandings.

Configuring hardwares and softwares

To help in characterising the meshing of thetechnological and the social within evolvinginfrastructures of renewable energy provision, weadopt in this section a shorthand that distinguishesbetween the hardware and software of socio-technical systems. Using this we can conceive thehardware of engineered artefacts as being utilisedwithin and through the co-dependent and co-evolvingsoftware of its social organisation. Each of theseelements is considered in turn.

Differentiated hardwares

Renewable energy is a socially constructed category,covering a diverse and still evolving set of multiple

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hardwares that are defined as renewable by sharingone key characteristic that through generatinguseable energy in the form of electricity or heat,the resource base is not depleted or significantlydiminished. This is a quality not of the hardwareitself, but of the energy conversion that is beingperformed and, in some instances, the way thatthis conversion through technology is organised.For biomass burning, renewal of the resource isdependent on the replenishment of the stock ofwood, energy crops or wastes a question oforganisation and practice rather than of technology.Renewable energy generation hardwares also involvelow levels of pollution, including carbon dioxide,but not exclusively so.

Not only are the forms of hardware within therenewable energy category diverse and heteroge-neous, but they can be implemented at markedlydifferent material sizes

1

in terms of both physicalform and energy generating capacity. This is illustratedin Table 1, which, for five forms of renewableenergy, distinguishes between macro, meso, microand pico sizes of implementation. This hyper-sizeability is a distinctive characteristic of renewableenergy hardwares not as readily realised by otherenergy technologies; commonplace nuclear reactorsremain a fantasy of the 1950s. Each of these hard-wares, when implemented at different sizes, hasdifferent relational qualities of physical presence,connection to other physical infrastructure (buildingsin particular), degrees of mobility and potentialfor environmental impact and disturbance. Thesequalities, as we shall discuss later, are also implicatedin various ways in the forms of social relationbetween technology and publics.

Differentiated softwares

The software of social and infrastructural organisa-tion through which alternative renewable energyhardwares are utilised and given purpose andmeaning is similarly heterogeneous and evolving.What makes up the software of social organisationis a combination of different interacting arrangementsand relations between actors and institutions thatcan be extrapolated from four sets of questions:

Function and service

: what is the generated energybeing used for in terms of the services (comfort,warmth, visibility, mobility etc.) that it is providing?Who utilises these potential services and whatphysical and institutional distance is there betweenthe point of energy production and the point ofservice consumption?

Ownership and return

: who owns the technologyand how is this ownership organised privately,publicly, collectively and at what scale locally,nationally, internationally? What benefits, monetaryor otherwise, are returned as a consequence ofownership?

Management and operation

: who manages,controls and maintains the hardware and howis this organised privately, publicly, collectively;locally, remotely? To what extent is managementregulated and through what principles andmechanisms?

Infrastructure and networking

: is the energy that isgenerated fed into an electricity or heat network(is it on or off grid?) and if so, what scale of network local, regional or national? What/who does thisnetwork supply and how is it managed (locally,distantly; publicly or by regulated market?)

Table 1 Examples of renewable energy technology hardware at different sizes

Type Macro Meso Micro Pico Energy form

Wind Wind farm Stand alone wind turbine(s)

Roof-mounted turbine

Canal barge, mounted turbine

Electricity

Biomass Biomass-fuelled turbine

Biomass-fuelled district heating system

Wood-fuelled boiler

Wood burners and stoves

Heat and/or electricity

Solar PV Solar power station PV building cladding Roof PV panels Calculator, garden lights

Electricity

Solar heat Solar furnace Passive solar building design

Roof panels or swimming pool

Solar ovens Heat

Hydro-electric power

Reservoir based Small hydro Micro hydro Hydro in streams

Electricity

Ground source heat pump

Office block or industrial unit heating

Household heating system

Heat


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There are a large number of permutations to how thesefour sets of questions can be answered individuallyand in combination as

crucially

any one combina-tion of hardware form and size does not

necessarily

imply any one particular configuration of socialorganisation; alternatives are always theoreticallyavailable. It is then a question of which hardwareand software combinations become configurationsthat work at a particular place and time and whichremain unrealised or marginalised.

Five modes of implementation

To illustrate the use of this framework, Table 2characterises five commonly understood modes ofrenewable energy implementation that have emergedin the UK and the broad configurations of hardwareand software associated with each mode. Wespecifically use mode here in preference to theterms regime and niche that are commonly usedin the literature on socio-technical systems (Ripand Kemp 1998; Geels and Schot 2007). As a looserterm mode allows for greater simultaneous heter-ogeneity and avoids some of the problematicassumptions of the deliberate nested hierarchicaltransition management framework (for a more detaileddiscussion, see Shove and Walker 2007). The labelgiven to each mode, and the key distinguishingfactor that we thereby highlight, identifies the locusof agency to implement energy generation. Table 2also indicates the political discourses associatedwith each mode, highlighting how their emergencehas been bound up and legitimised by widerideological currents (Bijker

et al.

1987).The first of the five modes, public utility,

homogenised renewable energy production throughmuch of the twentieth century. Technology hardwareconsisted only of large-scale hydroelectric power(HEP). No other types or sizes of renewable energyhardware were deployed, excepting a few state-fundeddemonstration projects. The HEP installations wereoperated and managed by public sector institutionsunder a universal provision ideology (Van Vliet

et al.

2005) and supplied electricity into the nationalgrid, without this being distinguished as greenelectricity or isolatable from that produced by otherforms of power generation.

The second mode, private supplier, emerged afterprivatisation of the energy utilities and infrastruc-tures in 1989. Reflecting wider neo-liberal ideology,consumer choice and market logics (Toke and Lauber2007), liberalisation opened up opportunities fornew entrants into energy production with diversifica-

tion of renewable energy hardware supported bysubsidies and protected market share for specifiedforms and sizes of near market technologies (Mitchell

et al.

2006). A stream of spatially dispersed privatesector projects, primarily on-shore wind farms andenergy from waste installations, extended the typeand size of hardware beyond large-scale HEP(Walker 1997). The range of organisations, partnersand intermediaries involved also diversified, withfunctional distinctions appearing between generationand supply and between those developing, owningand managing particular facilities. However, thesocial organisation has been largely standardised ona model of private capital funding with returns toshareholders, feeding electricity into the grid andworking through a liberalised but regulated energymarket. Under this mode green electricity becomesa distinct commodity, with tariffs available forcustomers to purchase a proportion or all of theirelectricity from renewable sources (Hartmann andIbanez 2007).

The third mode, community, has its roots innormative activist discourses of the 1960s and 1970s(Dunn 1978; Lovins 1977). Through a communityapproach, it was argued, energy hardware andsoftware configurations could be radically different smaller-scale, locally appropriate, environmentallyand socially benign. Such perspectives were broughtinto the mainstream of energy policy in the early2000s, largely for instrumental rather than norma-tive reasons, but drawing on a neo-communitariandiscourse of local participation and empowerment(Walker

et al.

2007a). A series of funding andsupport programmes were set up and by late 2004an estimated 500 projects, predominantly in ruralareas, were under development (Walker

et al.

2007a).These have implemented technologies at meso andmicro sizes, and utilised a multiplicity of configura-tions of the different elements of social organisation.Some are entirely off-grid, supplying heat or elec-tricity to single buildings, or to groups of buildingsthrough a local network. Others both supply locallyand distribute excess electricity to the national gridor are only grid connected. Some are collectivelyowned through cooperative-based share ownership,some are set up and operated by existing localauthority and/or community institutions in partner-ship arrangements (Owen 2004). What makes theseprojects distinctively community is impreciselydefined and contested. In practice, however, theyhave involved processes of project developmentthat are to some degree local and collective in

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Table 2 Five modes of implementation of renewable energy in the UK

ModesUnderlying discourses Technologies Size

Function and service Ownership and return

Management and operation

Infrastructure and networking

Public utility

Universal provision Hydroelectric Macro Electricity for grid and distanced consumption

Public, return to state Publicly owned utility

National electricity grid

Private supplier

Neoliberal market logic, consumer choice

Wind, waste to energy, hydro

Macro and meso

Electricity for grid and distanced consumption

Private, differentiated, return to shareholders

Privately owned utility; differentiation in roles

National electricity grid; regulated market

Community Neocommunitar- ianism, participation, sustainable communities

Solar, wind, hydro, biomass, heat pump

Meso and micro

Electricity or heat for local consumption and/or grid

Multiple models; partnerships, cooperatives, user-led; some collective return

Multiple models; partnerships, user-led, cooperatives

Off grid and/or feed to national or local network (heat or electricity)

Household Personal environmental responsibility, self reliance, autonomy

Solar, wind, hydro, biomass, heat pump

Micro Electricity or heat primarily for local consumption

Household as owner or host; direct or indirect return to household

Multiple models; plug and play, company driven, microgrid

Off-grid and/or feed to national or local network (heat or electricity)

Business Corporate social responsibility, business efficiency

Solar, wind, hydro, biomass, heat pump, waste to energy

Meso and micro

Electricity or heat primarily for local consumption

Business as owner or host; direct or indirect return to business

Multiple models; plug and play, company driven

Off-grid and/or feed to national or local network (heat or electricity)


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nature, and/or beneficial project outcomes (economicand social) that are also to some degree local andcollective, rather than distant, individualised or cor-porate in destination (Walker

et al.

2007b).The fourth mode, household, has always been

co-present to some degree with the others, extendingback to the very earliest burning of wood-fuel, peatand agricultural wastes for cooking and heating.Renewable micro-generation did not take any otherform until the 1970s, when solar water heatingtechnology started to be marketed and installed bysmall businesses, primarily on the roofs of middle-class homes or for back-garden swimming pools.It has been estimated that 78 470 such installationshave been made in the UK over the last 30 or soyears (DTI 2006). Micro-technologies for generatingelectricity also started to be experimented with, buton a small scale and with little state support. Recentfunding programmes and policy initiatives have,however, started to promote the diffusion of a widerrange of technologies. The Clear Skies capital fund-ing programme set up in 2003, replaced in 2006 bythe Low Carbon Buildings programme, providedsubsidies for household installations of six differenttechnology types. The Microgeneration Strategy (DTI2006) lays out a strategy for developing powerfrom the people, drawing on discourses of personalresponsibility to act on climate change and of selfreliance and independence from utilities. Infrastruc-tures of technology supply, marketing and supporthave begun to emerge including through majorDIY stores and the Low Carbon Buildings fundinghas been repeatedly oversubscribed (Seager 2007).In the household mode, the deployment of technologyis necessarily localised; however, different models ofownership, operation, management and networkingcan still be utilised. Watson

et al.

(2006) considerthree deployment models: Plug and Play, in whichhomeowners own, finance and control the technologythemselves; Company Driven, in which the house-holder provides the site for the technology or acts asa host, but this is owned, financed and controlledby a utility company and operated according totheir needs; and Community Micro-grid, in whichhouseholds in an area pool their resources and feedinto to a small local network.

The fifth mode, business, shares much in commonwith the household mode except that it is businessesof diverse sizes and sectors retail, leisure, manufac-turing, farming that are the locus of implementa-tion, producing electricity at their own property fortheir own use and/or grid supply. Business genera-

tion has also been co-present with other modes,extending back to the earliest applications of hydrotechnologies for powering industrial processes. Inthe contemporary forms encouraged by governmentsupport schemes, a range of technologies arebeing used, at meso as well as micro sizes, under adiversity of models of ownership, management andreturn. The growth of this mode has been driven inpart by business and eco-efficiency discourses, butmore recently by corporate social responsibility andmarket positioning in relation to carbon reduction,offsetting and trading.

Private supplier, community, household andbusiness modes of implementation all now coexistin the UK in an evolving constellation of co-provisioning (Van Vliet

et al.

2005, 71). Furthermorecommunity, household and business modes areinternally diverse containing many different possibleconfigurations of technology and social organisation.Hybrid modes that further complicate and destabiliseour characterisation are also being pursued suchas private utility wind farms in which one turbineis owned by the community through local shareownership.

Socio-technical heterogeneity therefore nowcharacterises the emerging pattern of renewable energyimplementation in the UK and whilst the privatesupplier mode vastly dominates in terms of pro-duction capacity, other modes are becoming moreestablished, supported by state funding, grassrootsactivism, corporate positioning and entrepreneurialactivity and by sets of discourses that providelegitimacy for flows of resources and for coalitionsof actors to form around different modes ofdeployment.

This heterogeneity is co-producing multiplegeographies of scale, networks and institutionalrelations, with implications for the spaces thatenergy production is now beginning to occupy, forthe scales at which this is being organised, for thetopography of networks of interconnection betweenproduction and consumption and for the multiplicityof interconnected organisations and intermediariesinvolved. Whilst each of these geographies meritsfurther exploration, it is on the emerging socialgeography of public engagement with renewableenergy that we now focus.

The public and renewable energy

The public is, of course, not one thing, but pluraland differentiated, produced and demarcated in

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different ways. Sheller (2004) uses the imagery ofliquid social dynamics to convey the sense in whichpublics slip in and out of different contexts, identitiesand relationships. Therefore, just as we emphasisedthe heterogeneity of renewable energy as a socio-technical category in the preceding discussion, wesimilarly need to think about the public in a waywhich opens up different forms of relation betweenpeople and technology and which allows for multiplemeanings and identities.

The five modes of renewable energy implementa-tion we have discussed have embedded within thema spectrum of ways in which ordinary people, or thepublic in a more general sense, may be implicated(Akrich 1992). In Table 3, ten such roles are outlined captive consumer; active customer; service user;financial investor; local beneficiary; project protestor;project supporter; project participant; technologyhost; and energy producer. Each role is characterisedin terms of spatial proximity and the degree to whichactive awareness and engagement is involved. Table 4in turn shows which of these roles are implicated ineach of the five modes of implementation, with adistinction made between roles that are explicit inthe discursive resources and practice of each mode;and others that may be produced or taken up inparticular circumstances.

These tables show that as configurations ofrenewable energy technology and social organisa-tion have evolved over the past 15 years, new anddistinct social roles have been produced that extendfar beyond the end-of-wire

captive consumer

ofthe pre-1989 energy system. There is now acrossthe different modes a constellation of ways inwhich the public is being produced, imagined ormobilised. The private supplier mode redefinescustomers as

active consumers

able to choose greenelectricity and to act as

investors

in green funds. Thecommunity mode imagines people as collectivesrather than individuals,

participants

and

beneficiaries

arranged into categories of the local and thecommunity. The household mode transgressesthe producerconsumer divide to redefine everydaypractice as involving both consumption and pro-duction (Chappells

et al.

2000). Across all modes,protestors may appear as actors rejecting the role(s)defined by system advocates and self-identifying anengagement that resists technology development.

The existence of these multiple roles producesthe potential for a diversity of everyday encountersand interactions with energy technology, in both anabstract and a material sense. People signing up

for a green tariff or investing in green funds engagewith renewable energy as an abstracted and spatiallydistanced category. In contrast, when acting as

participants

in community projects or as household

producers

,people interact with the material implementation ofspecific forms and sizes of technology in a place the landscape, the village, the household and withthe specific social arrangements that are applied. Inmobilising as

protestors

against prospective develop-ments, people may engage both with the generality ofrenewable energy as a means of energy production orcarbon reduction and the specifics of an unwantedproject in a particular location. In each of theseencounters, and across the various roles, technologymay readily take on different meanings and identities an anonymous engineered artefact, an expression of ethicalprinciple, a means of community empowerment, a com-mercial opportunity, or a symbol of cultural defilement.

In recognising this fluidity of meaning and themultiple social relations and spatialities involved,some key analytical questions with significant policyimplications begin to emerge. In the space availablewe can only begin to flesh out three of these.

First, how and to what extent do people asindividuals or in social groups differentiate betweenthe many different forms, sizes and social arrange-ments of renewable energy that are available? Is there,for example, any continuity of meaning between the2 MW wind turbine feeding the grid and the roof-mounted 2.5 kW turbine feeding the household, orare these seen as substantially distinct and discon-nected? Does the same project in technical termstake on different meanings and generate differentresponses depending upon how specific aspects ofsocial arrangement such as ownership, return andoperation are arranged and therefore differentpublic roles are activated or made possible? It isclaimed, for example, that projects organised undera community model, activating roles of participant,local beneficiary and, under some models, localinvestor will generate more support and less opposi-tion than others. Whilst there is some evidence tosupport this claim, it does not necessarily hold upunder all circumstances and in all contexts (Walker

et al.

2007b). Under a similar logic, developersoperating in private supplier mode are increasinglyseeking to cast nearby publics as local beneficiariesby devising financial packages that provide a returnto the community. Whilst advocated as a necessaryevolution of the private supplier mode (Centre forSustainable Energy

et al.

2007), such packages canbe readily interpreted as bribery rather than goodwill

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Table 3 Public roles and renewable energy

Roles Description Proximity to technologyLevel of awareness/active engagement with renewable energy

Captive consumers

Pay bills to established energy supplier. End of wire. Distanced from the sources of renewable energy dispersed through national grid.

All energy customers (unknowingly) consume some energy from renewable sources.

Active customers

Actively choose between suppliers including green tariffs which partially or entirely involve renewable generation.

End of wire. Distanced from the sources of renewable energy dispersed through national grid.

Green tariff customers actively choose renewable energy supply.

Service users

Use the services (light, heat, motion etc.) provided by energy generated using renewable technologies, potentially in many different everyday settings and forms and function of building.

May not be spatially close to technologies, but are explicitly so in heat networks and household/community modes of implementation.

The derivation of the energy services may be totally unknown to the user or visibly, actively and deliberately promoted as being from renewable sources (e.g. in demonstration projects).

Financial investors

Invest in shareholding or interest earning arrangements relating to specific projects, to the broad financing of renewable energy projects or to the investment choices of particular companies.

Investment opportunities may be locally restricted (e.g. REIC-backed projects in Wales

a

); open to distant investors (e.g. JUICE Greenpeace-NPower tariffs for North Hoyle

b

); or aspatial.

Investment in renewable energy whether personally, locally or through companies portfolios is generally, but not exclusively, active and aware.

Local beneficiaries

Receive benefits in addition to energy services; financial, infrastructural, educational, technological or intangible. Such benefits are increasingly negotiated in formal (planning) engagement.

Benefits may be direct or explicitly tied spatially through community funds administered by local groups.

Such benefits may be visible and known to local people, or hidden and unknown.

Project protestors

Actively object to projects through for example organisation of a local protest group, attending meetings, writing to press, lobbying, signing petitions etc.

While some campaign groups (e.g. Country Guardian

c

) are not spatially linked, most protestors are focused on local projects.

Protest activity is by definition aware and actively engaged.

Project supporters

Actively engage in similar actions to protestors, although support is typically less visibly organised and vocal.

Linked to local projects, tend to overlap with participants. Campaign groups may be spatially distant (e.g. Yes2Wind

d

).

Supporter activity is by definition aware and actively engaged.

Project participants

Get involved in community mode of implementation, includes: membership of organising groups; attending meetings; or hands-on installation or maintenance.

Explicitly linked to spatially-tied community or household modes.

Theoretically any member of a community, in practice involvement is variable and participation can take different forms.

Technology hosts

Owners of buildings or land, but not the renewable energy technology itself.

Necessarily spatially linked. Intentionally through institutional arrangements (e.g. Windcrofting

TM

)

e

and Company Driven micro-gen; but potentially less so (e.g. new owner of a hosting house).

Energy producers

Directly owns and operates generation technologies.

Normally proximate and part of household. Necessarily active and aware, although may be acquired with house purchase rather than actively installed.

a

http://www.reic.co.uk/generalinfo.html;

b

http://www.npower-renewables.com/northhoyle/;

c

http://www.countryguardian.net/;

d

http://www.yes2wind.com/;

e

http://provenenergy.co.uk/windcrofting/

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if alternative meanings are placed on the socialarrangements put in place.

Second, how do different roles cluster, interrelateand interconnect? As the ten roles are not mutuallyexclusive but rather can be simultaneously embodiedand enacted, they may in principle interact throughlearning mechanisms. Certainly there are assump-tions embedded in policy which do envisagesuch learning taking place. For example, one ofthe motives for government support for communityrenewables was that work could be done on heartsand minds (Walker

et al.

2007a), improving under-standing of unfamiliar technologies and makingpeople feel more positive about renewable energyin general thereby reducing public opposition towind farms. In terms of the roles we have identified,a learning mechanism was presumed between theroles of participant/beneficiary and protestor, the formerserving to erode the latter. However, this mechanismmay well not exist if the distinctions between differentmodes of social organisation and between the generaland specific meanings of renewable energy discussedabove are paramount. The same person might quitereasonably be a protestor against a large-scale windfarm proposed by an internationally owned utilityand at the same time an active participant in acommunity hydro project in the same locality andproducer in their own home.

Third, which people seek or are able to take updifferent roles in different circumstances? Questionsof identity, structure and context are important inunderstanding where and when different roles arerealised and who may be unresponsive or excludedfrom the possibilities of particular forms of engage-ment. Whilst much effort has been directed towardtrying to understand the processes shaping patternsof political resistance to, in particular, wind farmproposals (Walker 1995; Bell

et al.

2005; Wolsink2007), reflecting the dominant media representationof relations between public and renewables in theUK, relatively little is known about the dynamicsand significance of other forms of engagement. Thenotion of energy citizenship envisages multiple rolesand engagements being activated (Devine Wright2007), with the green tariff customer becoming themicro-generating producer and the communityparticipant in a virtuous cycle of engagement. How-ever, it is naive to assume that everyone can take upthese roles. Choosing a higher price green tariff,investing in shares and paying the upfront capitalcosts to install micro-generation technology aresocially differentiated engagements open to those

Tabl

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XO

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OO

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role

exp

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and

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O:

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expe

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in p

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cir

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ces


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with sufficient income and resources, and in thecase of micro-generation those owning their ownhomes, but not to others. Just as there are inequalitiesin access to energy consumption (Summerton 2004),we should equally expect there to be inequalities inaccess to energy citizenship and the benefits thisbrings. In this light the rhetoric of the governmentmicro-generation strategy, painting a picture ofactive citizenship in which high tech productscan be tailored to individual taste, providingfreedom and independence to the user (DTI2006, 2) is an individualising and exclusive one.

Conclusion

The recent decision by the European Council toagree a binding target of 20 per cent renewablegeneration by 2020, as part of a 20 per cent carbonreduction target, emphasises the role of renewablesin responding to climate change. This, however,begs the question of what that 20 per cent willconsist of which technologies, at what sizes,through what patterns of ownership, management,operation, return and networking, and with whatimplications for the embedding of relations betweenpeople, technology and institutions? When thereare so many possibilities for configuring what wehave termed hardwares and softwares across andwithin the five modes of implementation outlinedin this paper, what processes and which actors areto shape the emergent hybridity of the UK energysystem? And how might the public, situated withinthe multiple roles we have identified, be embroiledin the co-production and co-evolution of thesocial and technical? Certainly these are not simplequestions of government direction. Policy interven-tions are important and their impacts need to bebetter understood, but these only materialise, some-times unpredictably, within a dynamic socio-technicalsystem (Berkhout 2002; Shove and Walker 2007).Similarly, just as governments do not have theonly hand on the tiller (Rip 2006), we need to guardagainst conceptualising individuals as having asimplistic agency, able to autonomously performthe roles we have identified. As Southerton

et al.

(2004), Shove (2003) and others have argued, it isnecessary to take on board the complexity of thesocial practices involved in shifting towards moresustainable lifestyles, mediated through systems ofprovision, if we are to develop a more realistic viewof the trajectories and possibilities of future change.In this respect, whilst we can be positive about the

grassroots commitments that are emerging aroundthe climate-change agenda and specifically aroundaspects of community and household renewableenergy policy communities need to recognise thatfar more than a shift in the attitudes and intentionsof individuals is required to achieve significantcarbon reductions through these means.

Against the background of dynamic technologicaland social complexity, the dominant discourses,exhortations and understandings of both policymakers and those in the renewables industry tendto focus on certain technology types and sizes (e.g.large wind farms) and certain modes of implemen-tation (e.g. private supplier), with the corollary ofaddressing the public in terms of certain configura-tions of social relations consultation and formalprocess of engagement, and increasingly financialcompensation in the form of community packages.Whilst other technologies, scales and modes ofimplementation, and other forms of relation withrenewables are now being actively supported throughpolicy, these moves have been driven at least inpart by an expectation that greater public supportfor big technology solutions will be produced andby assumptions of interconnection between differentpublic roles. We have questioned these expectationsand assumptions and identified the need, in variousrespects, for a more differentiated socio-technicalanalysis of the renewable energy category. We havealso called for attention to be given to the patternsof social unevenness and inequality which alternativetrajectories of development are likely to produce.

In our discussion such lines of inquiry havehighlighted a range of questions to be explored infuture research including how renewable energytechnologies takes on different meanings andassociations, how publics do or do not differentiatebetween socio-technical configurations, how multiplepublic roles are interconnected, how learningmechanisms operate, and how the expectations ofthe public held by other actors shape technology andsystem development. These are research questionsin which geography needs to be involved, integratinganalysis of space, identity, inequality, agency andstructure into our understanding of the emergingsocial patterning of what might constitute a lowcarbon energy system.

Acknowledgements

This paper has drawn on research undertaken in two ESRC-funded projects Community energy initiatives: embedding

468

Walker and Cass

Area



sustainable technology at a local level RES-338-25-0010and Beyond Nimbyism: a multidisciplinary investigation ofpublic engagement with renewable energy RES-152-25-1008. We are grateful for the inputs and insights of ourcollaborators on these projects.

Note

1 Note that the term scale is deliberately avoided here,having a potentially broader set of meanings (Van Vliet2004).

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