New Publication out now: „Reassembling energy policy“

26. April 2019

The research paper “Reassembling Energy Policy: Models, Forecasts, and Policy Change in Germany and France” has now been published by Science & Technology Studies.

Abstract: Forecasts and scenarios calculated by energy system models are used by a wide range of public and private actors to make investment decisions, identify problems, and support or criticise political interventions. The article presents an analytical framework for studying such entanglements between predictive practices and policy-making. Drawing on work in STS and the anthropology of politics, energy policy is conceptualised as a field of contention, populated by competing predictive policy assemblages. This concept is applied to a historical study on German and French energy policy-making, focusing on two periods. In the post-WWII decades, energy forecasts contributed to the structuring of 'energy policy' as an autonomous policy domain centred on energy supply technologies. This dominant paradigm was challenged in the 1970s and 1980s, when new modelling techniques forged by civil society groups brought energy demand and renewable energies to the fore politically and helped structure new political alliances. The article concludes by arguing that new ways of 'assembling' energy systems in models and forecasts can contribute to policy change, if they successfully 'perform' energy policy along three dimensions: by instituting alternative future-visions; by enabling new forms of political intervention; and by contributing to the formation of new 'predictive policy assemblages'.