Imagining sustainable energy and mobility transitions: Valencetemporality and radicalism in 38 visions of a low-carbon future

摘要

Based on an extensive synthesis of semi-structured interviews, media contentanalysis, and reviews, this article conducts a qualitative meta-analysis of morethan 560 sources of evidence to identify 38 visions associated with sevendifferent low-carbon innovations – automated mobility, electric vehicles, smartmeters, nuclear power, shale gas, hydrogen, and the fossil fuel divestmentmovement – playing a key role in current deliberations about mobility orlow-carbon energy supply and use. From this material, it analyzes such visionsbased on rhetorical features such as common problems and functions, storylines,discursive struggles, and rhetorical effectiveness. It also analyzes visionsbased on typologies or degrees of valence (utopian vs. dystopian), temporality(proximal vs. distant), and radicalism (incremental vs. transformative). Thearticle is motivated by the premise that tackling climate change via low-carbonenergy systems (and practices) is one of the most significant challenges of thetwenty-first century, and that effective decarbonization will require not onlynew energy technologies, but also new ways of understanding language, visions,and discursive politics surrounding emerging innovations and transitions.