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Abstract
Low carbon transitions of urban energy systems have been on urban research and policy agendas for several years now. While the spatialities of infrastructure transitions have been widely discussed, their temporalities have attracted much less attention. This is surprising, since the transition of urban infrastructures in the course of system integration and decarbonisation reveal strong temporal dynamics: new temporalities or temporal requirements not only emerge as a result of technological change (e.g. by integrating fluctuating renewables or storage technologies) but also of changing social practices (e.g. in urban load management or energy use). We argue that aligning urban and infrastructure temporalities involves negotiations between the various energy providers, regulators and users involved and is a highly political process. As we know little about such temporal dynamics so far, this study uses an explorative methodology to elaborate on a conceptual framework of urban and infrastructural temporalities. This framework has been developed in an iterative way by going back and forth between conceptual contributions and empirical findings drawn from expert interviews regarding low carbon transitions in Rotterdam. Our case study of Rotterdam indicates that unsolved challenges in aligning urban and infrastructural temporalities can be seen as a major restriction to realise low carbon energy solutions.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Leon Hempel, Rob Kitchin and Caspar Menkman for feedback on ideas and early versions of this paper as well as the editors of this special feature for their very helpful feedback.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
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Notes on contributors
Ivonne Elsner
Ivonne Elsner is Research Associate in the Department of Architecture & Associate at Research Training Group KRITIS at TU Darmstadt, Germany. Email: [email protected]
Jochen Monstadt
Jochen Monstadt is Professor of Governance of Urban Transitions in the Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Email: [email protected]
Rob Raven
Rob Raven is Professor of Institutions and Societal Transitions, Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University, the Netherlands & Professor and Research Director at Monash Sustainable Development Institute, Melbourne, Australia. Email: [email protected]