Climate change isn't just a technical issue; it's a societal one. Interview with lead author Julia Kirch Kirkegaard on the Grand Challenges paper on social science, published in Nature Energy
"Today, design decisions are often made without much deliberation. And when the public then raises concerns, their response is often not taken seriously, leading to widespread resistance in local communities. We argue, therefore, that societal values and concerns need to be included much earlier and throughout the entire life-cycle of green energy projects,” says Julia.
As wind energy plays an increasingly vital role in the global shift towards a cleaner future, opposition to renewable energy technologies has grown significantly. This emphasises the need for a socio-technical approach in designing and implementing renewable energy systems, but often, silo-mentality gets in the way and risks becoming a grand challenge in its own right. Technical sciences must move beyond viewing local opposition solely as an obstacle to be addressed through technical or economic solutions. Instead, they should recognise their broader societal role and understand how their design and deployment decisions influence social dynamics. Such a perspective could enable the technical sciences to see public opposition not as something to eliminate but as an opportunity for learning and value creation.
Link: Tackling grand challenges in wind energy through a socio-technical perspective
www.nature.com/articles/s41560-023-01266-z
The authors are Julia Kirch Kirkegaard, David Philipp Rudolph, Sophie Nyborg, Helena Solman, Elizabeth Gill, Tom Cronin & Mary Hallisey.
The paper is one of ten in the series on grand challenges of wind energy science, written in the context of the IEA Wind collaboration. The international wind energy research community has determined that for wind power to fulfil its expected role as a major global supplier of carbon-free energy, critical challenges around the design, development, and deployment of wind energy must be addressed-quickly.
The Nature Energy paper - arguing from a lens founded in Science & Technology Studies (STS) - also demonstrates how the seemingly technical issues related to spatial conditions, scalability, and system design all have a ‘social’ aspect to them that must be taken into account when green energy technologies are deployed.
The paper is a collaborative effort between European and American scholars - at DTU Wind and Energy Systems, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and Wageningen University & Research (WUR).