Contested Energies: Controversial Energy Infrastructures and the Fight for America’s Energy Future

• In Event: 1555 - Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 5. Scaling Up the Debate: SKAT Perspectives on Public Policies

Abstract

In order to gain insight into how the futures of energy are being imagined, contested, and embedded in material and social relations, this paper investigates the public controversies and policy discourses surrounding two energy related proposals: the Millennium Bulk Terminal (a coal export facility in the Northwest), and the Grain Belt Express (wind farm power transmission lines in the Midwest). Energy transport infrastructures play a key role in the design and re-design of energy systems by making it possible to scale up and “lock-in” energy regimes. Understanding the controversies regarding each of these infrastructure cases—and the social, political, and institutional context that embed them—this paper contributes a better understanding of how interest groups and policy shape public opinion, investments dollars, and governmental actions regarding current and future energy pathways. Importantly, these arguments and “energy imaginaries”—contemporary social constructions regarding how future energy will be generated, distributed, and consumed—are not simply reflective of energy per se, but because of energy’s central role in the very constitution of society, they also reflect core issues regarding the constitution of the state, the market, and civil society and therefore the contemporary political order itself. This project relies on a media analysis of over 20 local and national newspapers, and the collection of key policy and archival materials to expose the competing energy imaginaries used to advocate for these projects and criticize competing types of energy. Public controversies surrounding energy infrastructures represent more than simple technological barriers but reveal deeper sociological issues that make one or another energy regime possible. By understanding the elements at play and the shape energy imaginaries of the future take, we will be better able to understand, predict, even mold societal changes in more sustainable directions.

Author

• Bridget Austin Clark, University of California, Davis