Pilot Projects and Test Beds as Tools of Governance and Participation in Sustainability Transitions?

• In Event: Co-creating or Testing Scalable Societies? Test Beds and Living Labs as Emerging Innovation Policy Instruments - II

Abstract

Over the last years, much has been written on the role of test beds and pilot projects in sustainability transitions. Many have described innovation and the dynamics through which new technologies emerge, how they become tested in pilot and demonstration projects, and how such initiatives might scale-up. Despite of this, there is need for better understanding of how such innovation activities, policies and participation is co-produced.
We are particularly interested in two aspects of pilot projects and test beds: 1) as tools of governance, through which authorities channel resources and legitimacy to specific actors, goals and futures, and where techno-epistemic actors aim to transform certain areas such as mobility 2) as potential sites of public engagement, participation and democracy. We are particularly interested in exploring how pilot projects shape and are shaped, by their relations to other actors in society, symmetrically exploring the participation of different sorts or actors and how different actors work to orchestrate participation of others. Thus, we strive to ask to what degree these projects represent post-political modes of governance and decision-making in which democratic procedures are by-passed to introduce comprehensive socio-technical change with potentially wide-ranging consequences and to what degree they open up for co-creation by means of citizen involvement, active public engagement and user centric designs?
The paper is based on empirical studies of several pilot projects that seek to verify and test technologies associated with the distributed renewable energy transition and electric mobility, including so-called smart energy technologies.

Authors

• Marianne Ryghaug, Norwegian University of Science & Technology (NTNU)

• Tomas Moe Skjølsvold