Doctoral Dissertation Research: Navigating and Negotiating Multiple Energy Futures and Infrastructures

新能源的开发及其成本的急剧下降正在给美国社会带来新的机遇和挑战。这一变化不仅仅代表了技术上的转变，因为它影响了我国几个地区的就业和经济组织。能源运输基础设施在设计和重新设计能源系统方面发挥关键作用，使这种系统能够扩大规模，从而更充分和有效地利用新能源。由于这些变化，关于获取新能源的最佳途径的公众对话提供了关于能源变化的影响的重要信息，特别是将新能源运送给消费者的问题。本项目将分析这些公共对话，以评估其动态及其经济和社会影响。对这些案例的分析将有助于我们理解这些价值观和未来的愿景如何通过围绕基础设施建设所做的决策而实质性地嵌入其中。该项目的研究结果将为特定社区和社会如何发展和管理能源行业的转型提供信息，从而为负责能源创造、监管和使用政策的各级决策者提供信息。该项目调查了围绕三个能源相关基础设施提案的公众和政策对话，这些提案涵盖了能源运输。该项目采用了多种方法，包括65个对主要利益相关者的半结构化深度访谈，30多家地方和全国性报纸的内容分析，以及来自监管机构、行业合作伙伴和社会运动组织的关键政策和档案材料。访谈将侧重于收集描述性会计和利益相关者对事件的看法，正式审查过程，以及围绕每个拟议项目的后续对话，以分析每个项目为什么以及如何评估，讨论，以及如何解决和发展能源创造和使用的竞争愿景。通过媒体内容分析，该项目将了解每个项目的区域框架是如何形成的，因此这些媒体框架是如何在不同的时间和能源案例中与个人利益相关者和利益相关者团体所倡导的媒体框架趋同或偏离的。档案文件内容分析将阐明联邦和州的监管结构和政策制度是如何影响每一次讨论的。通过对能源基础设施项目的比较案例研究，该项目将构建围绕当今社会中不同能源制度的新兴对话和评估。研究结果将为有关能源使用、社区转型和社会变革的社会学理论提供信息。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The development of new sources of energy coupled with the dramatic decline in their costs are creating new opportunities and challenges in United States society. This change represents more than a technological shift because it impacts employment and economic organization in several parts of our country. Energy transport infrastructures play a key role in the design and re-design of energy systems by making it possible to scale up such systems, thus more fully and efficiently using new energy sources. Because of these several changes, public conversations about the best ways to access new energy sources provide important information regarding the implications of change in energy sources, particularly the issues of transporting new energy sources to consumers. This project will analyze these public conversations to assess their dynamics as well as their economic and social impacts. Analysis of these cases will help us to understand how these values and visions of the future can become materially embedded through the decisions made around which infrastructures are built. Findings from the project will inform how transitions in the energy industry evolve and are managed by specific communities and by our society more generally, thus informing policymakers at several levels who are responsible for policy governing energy creation, regulation and usage. This project investigates the public and policy conversations surrounding three energy related infrastructure proposals that cover energy transportation. This project relies on a multi-methods approach combining 65 semi-structured in-depth interviews of key stakeholders, content analysis of over 30 local and national newspapers, and key policy and archival materials from regulatory agencies, industry partners, and social movement organizations. Interviews will focus on collecting descriptive accounting and stakeholder perceptions of the events, formal review processes, and subsequent conversations around each proposed project in order to analyze why and how each project was evaluated, discussed, and how competing visions of energy creation and usage were resolved and evolved. Through media content analysis, the project will understand how each project was regionally framed and therefore how these media frames converged with or deviated from those advocated by individual stakeholders and stakeholder groups, across time and the energy cases. The archival document content analysis will shed light on how the federal and state regulatory structures and policy regimes have shaped each discussion. Through this comparative case study of energy infrastructure projects, this project will construct the emerging conversations around and evaluations of the different energy regimes present in our society today. Findings will inform sociological theories regarding energy usage, community transformation, and social change.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.