Towards pragmatic narratives of societal engagement in the UK energy system
Towards pragmatic narratives of societal engagement in the UK energy system
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DOI：
10.1016/j.erss.2017.10.041
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发表时间：
2017-11
影响因子：
6.7
通讯作者：
I. Soutar;C. Mitchell
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
I. Soutar;C. Mitchell
社会参与能源系统的问题贯穿于能源政策的研究和实施中。在这两个领域，叙事作为有说服力的“意义载体”，有助于我们理解社会在过去和当前能源系统中的角色，并在未来的能源系统中塑造这些角色。然而，我们渴望简化复杂的历史和不成文的未来，这意味着我们创造的叙述往往依赖于假设。这对叙事的实用性程度产生了影响，从而对广泛的利益相关者有价值。本文根据社会参与能源系统的历史记录以及围绕未来能源系统的新兴论述，提出了使用参与叙事的几点注意事项。就历史叙述而言，这些与事后偏见、可预测性和规范定位有关，这些因素的结合将参与的历史描绘成回顾性的明显，并错误地暗示了过去事件的可控性。就前瞻性叙述而言，虽然乐观和模糊性在吸引利益相关者对愿景的兴趣方面发挥着关键作用，但它们也意味着叙述的相关性不同，因此对不同利益相关者的价值也不同。从根本上讲，叙事必须在其声称招募的参与者中找到合法性，因此必须同时关注能源系统参与的监管、规范和认知方面。
Issues of societal engagement in the energy system pervade both the study and the doing of energy policy. In both realms, narratives as persuasive ‘vehicles of meaning’ help us both to make sense of society’s role in past and current energy systems, and shape these roles in future energy systems. However, our eagerness to simplify complex histories and unwritten futures means that the narratives we create are often reliant on assumptions. This has implications for the degree to which narratives can find pragmatism, and thus be valuable, to a wide range of stakeholders.Drawing both on historic accounts of societal engagement in energy systems alongside emerging discourses around future energy systems, this paper offers several points of caution for the use of narratives of engagement. In terms of historic narratives, these relate to hindsight bias, predictability, and normative positioning, the combination of which depict histories of engagement as retrospectively obvious, and falsely suggest a controllability of past events. In terms of forward-looking narratives, while optimism and ambiguity play key roles in garnering interest in visions among stakeholders, they also mean that narratives vary in their relevance, and thus value to, different stakeholders. Fundamentally, narratives must find legitimacy in the actors they purport to recruit, and must thus simultaneously attend to regulative, normative and cognitive aspects of energy system engagement.