{"id":210,"date":"2014-09-23T13:53:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-23T13:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sussexnrggrp.wordpress.com\/?p=210"},"modified":"2015-06-09T11:01:30","modified_gmt":"2015-06-09T11:01:30","slug":"technological-absenteeism-and-energy-futures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/sussexenergygroup\/2014\/09\/23\/technological-absenteeism-and-energy-futures\/","title":{"rendered":"Technological Absenteeism and energy futures"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In Europe, taking on climate change involves backing a good number. 20% emissions cuts \"After<\/a>by 2020. 20% efficiency savings. 20% of whatever you\u2019re having yourself and if all goes well by next year it will be 40% by 2050. 100% of these numbers are set by the European Commission through a process of policy making. EU officials, individual government representatives, the Commission, powerful industry interest groups such as Eurelectric and NGOs like Greenpeace all chip-in. As with most policy processes, power plays a significant role; some interests are more important than others. At the end of the process, years often, a number is chosen, a base-line comparison year and almost certainly a target. 20%. For 2020.<\/p>\n

As such, a messy complex dynamic is abstracted to a target or equation and 28 states attempt to transpose it to local law, hoping this creates the sort of regulatory environment in which an electricity system will \u201ctransition\u201d from a fossil based system to a grid powered by Europe\u2019s wind and sunshine. Even if we succeed in this policy Yahtzee, even if we hit the 20%, 30%, 40%, what sort of new energy future has been created? How much stake for local firms or local government? How much democracy? 20%.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the politics. Now the technology. And people.<\/p>\n

Technological innovation and institutions<\/b><\/p>\n

Technology is the turbines on hills and solar units on roofs, but also the infrastructure that connects these to the grid, the wires and cables of the grid itself, the knowledge that engineers and software developers use to manage the grid, the knowledge that end users acquire and share and modify. These are technological configurations that work. Add in people. People are important. Socio-technical configurations then. Configurations of networks, systems.<\/p>\n

Over time new technologies emerge, not naturally, that\u2019s where the evolutionary metaphor falls down. No, selection occurs through action by innovators and developers, markets slowly form, for wind, for solar, for renewably generated electricity. Technologies are legitimised by early adopters, maybe comfortable North European middle class, hipsters, Prince Charles, entrepreneurs, social norms change slowly. Politicians begin to support the new technologies, again slowly, but over time the bright green renewable force gains strength against the incumbent fossils.<\/p>\n

Technological innovation systems theory has been used to describe the birth, growth and use of radical innovations across Europe. It puts the technology at the heart of the system, which includes also institutions and most importantly, networks of people, exposing the role of the financiers, urban and rural planners, lobbyists, civil servants and if we look hard enough, the public. Unfortunately somewhat unaccounted for within this theory\u200a\u2014\u200aat least until recently\u200a\u2014\u200ahas been an explanation as to how local contexts affect the development of technology systems. Is our transition to a sustainable energy system, a singular? That is, should we expect the same sort of wind technologies, markets, ownership models and infrastructures in Ireland as we\u2019ve seen develop in Spain or Denmark? If not, why not? What explains the landing of a technological innovation system to a new place, and what role does local (and indeed global) context play?<\/p>\n

So how do we begin to account for this context? Over the past few years great work is being done on the role of context and space (relational as well as geographic) in the technological innovation system by people like Lars Coenen, Jochen Markard, Christian Binz, Bernard Truffer and Steffen Wirth\u200a\u2014\u200aparticularly useful is Binz\u2019s excellent social network analysis on the geo-spatial characteristics of knowledge networks.<\/p>\n

My interest is with institutions. The rules of the game. The signposts that guide the system, entrepreneurs, developers, and users and policy makers. Ireland offers us a useful location to study these phenomena. Quick techno-history lesson on the development of wind in Ireland. Despite zero local manufacturing the industry has done a pretty good job of getting turbines on hills. There are over 2,000MW of installed capacity on a small island network of less than 10,000MW with a peak demand of less than half of that. At times during 2013 wind produced over half the dispatchable power on the grid. These are the sort of numbers the International Energy Agency and European Union get excited about in annual reports. They look great in graph form, and with spiky lines rising rapidly from left to right. Despite a weak local energy department long captured by large state utilities an active and lively network of wind farm developers have emerged. So how <\/i>has the Irish wind technology system developed and what sort of transition has come about. Who has paid and who has gained? So what is the role of institutional changes?<\/p>\n

We know from (neo)institutional theory that change comes to institutions slowly. But sometimes, very occasionally, institutional equilibrium gets punctured. The 1970s oil shocks and nuclear meltdowns at Chernobyl and Fukushima are examples of events which, at least in some locations [the different institutional reaction to Fukushima in Germany and the UK is worth considering perhaps as a study of discourse if not institutions] led to institutional change. These institutional changes can be thought of as turbulence or tumult. Institutions are the rules or directions, interpreted by people as signposts, allowing for certain behaviours, frowning on others, guiding decisions, carrying risk. And in the tumult of big shocks, some of these signs end up pointing in the wrong direction.<\/p>\n

Recession<\/b><\/p>\n

The global recession of 2008 was a shock just about as big as they come. In Europe, Ireland was at the forefront of the shockwave and felt it harder than anywhere, except maybe Greece and Portugal. So what changed with the recession.<\/p>\n