A critical discussion of research on the social acceptance of renewable energy generation and associated infrastructures and an agenda for the future

ABSTRACT

Social sciences’ research on the social acceptance of renewable energy generation and associated technologies (RET), such as high voltage power lines, has been growing in the last decades. In fact, while RET are considered one of the main mitigation measures of climate change, opposition to their construction, and namely from the local communities living nearby, is often found. Important conceptual proposals have been made for a better understanding of opposition, however, this literature still presents some limitations. Here, I will discuss two of them: first, the main focus on the local and, with it, the lack of a relational and critical approach, which recognizes opposition and other types of responses to RET as public participation in RET-related issues; second, the focus on the individual and the consequent lack of examining people’s material practices and engagements.

KEYWORDS:

• Social acceptance of renewable energy and associated technologies
• critical approach
• communities of relevance
• public participation
• theories of social practice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Susana Batel is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Psychological Research and Social Intervention of the University Institute of Lisbon (Cis, ISCTE-IUL), with a fellowship granted by the Portuguese Science Foundation. She is also a visiting fellow at the University of Exeter and at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences, UK. Her research adopts a critical perspective to look at the relation between re-presentation, identities, power, discourse and communication, and social change, namely regarding public participation in environmental issues, and responses to renewable energy and associated technologies. She is Co-Editor of the journal Papers on Social Representations.

ORCID

Susana Batel http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6586-6716

Notes

1 The focus will lie mainly on the social acceptance of RET as public/community responses to RET.

2 One should note that there are different versions of theories of practice (see Spaargaren, 2011, for a discussion), some more in tune with a relational and critical perspective than others. I am here following the ideas put forward by Shove et al. (2012) on social practices.

3 And yet, somewhat underlining their interconnection: ‘socio-political acceptance, community acceptance and market acceptance. All three, sometimes interdependent categories of social acceptance’ (p. 2684).

4 As mandated by international treaties often disconnected from situated knowledge and specific local and national, cultural and institutional conditions (Castree, 2014).

5 Marres (2012) points out that this is quite clear in the influential report The Limits to Growth, and has also been embedded in some psychological theories (e.g. Spence, Poortinga, & Pidgeon, 2012).

6 Whereas there are clear differences between everyday practices with smart meters and with large-scale energy production infrastructures, there are also similarities (e.g. they are material objects, which alter spaces and places, dreams, expectations, feelings, habits, etc.) that can be fruitfully explored by research on the social acceptance of RET.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a post-doctoral research fellowship [grant number SFRH/BPD/96061/2013] and by funds of the Center for Psychological Research and Social Intervention (Cis-IUL, ISCTE-IUL – Ref. UID/PSI/03125/2013) both funded by the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)).