Alain Nadai

A survey on the public perception of CCS in France

Abstract An awareness and opinion survey on carbon capture and storage (CCS) was conducted on a representative sample of French residents aged 15 years and above. About 6% of respondents were able to provide a satisfactory definition of the technology. The key question about ‘approval of or opposition to’ the use of CCS in France was asked twice, first after presenting the technology, then after explaining its potential adverse consequences. The approval rates, which were 59% and 38%, respectively, show that there is no a priori rejection of the technology. The sample was split in two to test for a semantic effect: half of the questionnaires used “Stockage” (English: storage), the other half “Sequestration”. Manipulating the vocabulary had no statistically significant effect on approval rates. Stockage is more meaningful, but does not convey the idea of permanent monitoring.

Birds, Wind and the Making of Wind Power Landscapes in Aude, Southern France

Abstract Landscape and birds are an important cause of blocking wind power projects. This paper investigates the question of whether birds and wind power can be part of a same landscape and what type of landscape this could compose. We do so by following birds, birdwatchers and wind power developers in their attempt to compose such a landscape in the South of France. Our perspective focuses on the attachments that animals or landscape might develop or entice humans to develop. We show that the process by which such a wind power landscape is composed engages birds into successive translations, which ultimately translate bird intelligence in composing with the wind into a quality of the landscape. As a result, such a landscape emerges from a net of relations and has a quality which is not necessarily visually readable: it is accountable to the entities which have been brought into representation through/for its making.

Unexpected Wind Power ‘Potentials’: The Art of Planning with Inherited Socio-Geographical Configurations (France)

Abstract The deployment of wind power induces deep changes in landscapes and territories. The politicization of wind power generates new ad hoc collectives. In the French case, because of the institutional framing resulting from landscape and wind power policies (centralization, feed-in tariffs, private developers), collectives of emerging wind power landscapes are regularly set apart from wind power planning processes. This paper explores the extent to which these recompositions and new collectives could be part of emerging wind power potentials. The empirical evidence stemming from our case studies shows that wind power technology, like any other technology, is not endowed with a potential per se. Wind power potentials differ – ‘capitalistic’, ‘controversial’, ‘negotiated’, ‘conditional’ – depending on planning processes and inherited configurations. The notions of striated space and smooth space enable us to adopt a relational perspective on these emerging collectives and to account for the role of inherited socio-geographical configurations and planning processes.

Wind Power and the Emergence of the Beauce Landscape, Eure-et-Loir, France

Abstract In 2003 wind power arrived massively in the Beauce (on the outskirts of the Parisian basin). This article follows the evolving practice of landscape planning over the course of wind power development in this region of France. Our analysis suggests that landscape is regulated through practices, discourses and aesthetic codes, which define what is important about landscape and attempt to protect it. It shows that wind power not only affects existing landscapes, but also challenges the working of these underlying practices and discourses, triggering the emergence of new codes. By calling for a renewal in the way in which we regulate and experience our landscapes, wind power enables us better to understand the way in which the energy transition might raise issues about landscape protection.

Wind Power Landscapes in France: Landscape and Energy Decentralisation

In 2000, at the dawn of the adoption of the EU Directive on renewable energy, a green-red alliance opened a political window for the emergence of a genuine wind power policy in France. Yet today, after more than 10 years of one of the highest feed-in tariffs in the world, the installed capacity in France is still low. Wind power, if it is to be developed at any significant level, has to fight against the centralization of both French energy policy and landscape protection. In this context, the landscape processes, which take place when wind power is either planned or sited at the local level through open governance, are places and occasions for institutional and social innovation that contribute to building decentralization. This chapter examines the ways in which wind power development has raised tensions over the centralization of both energy and landscape policy in France.The development of hydroelectricity in the French central Pyrenees at the beginning of the twentieth century was met with strong resistance in the name of landscape preservation and the protection of the tourist resource that landscape represented. Space had to be shared, and some reserves of picturesque features were obtained from the industrialists, in exchange for a free hand in tourist development. This chapter analyses how the interaction between the different stakeholders brought about this spatial partition and shows the ambivalence of the discourse constructed to legitimise it. By examining the case of the protected site of Gavarnie in depth, it sheds light on the social issues that were emerging as a background to the resistance to hydroelectricity and its impact on the landscape and shows how, through this resistance, the power of an external elite acting as a self-proclaimed aesthetic authority was imposed on communities in the mountain areas.This chapter discusses the way in which cross national comparison shall be approached. We assume that energy landscapes emerge at the crossroads of energy technology development and changes in current landscapes. We successively discuss different frameworks for approaching technology devel-opment and landscape change, before turning to the recent literature about landscape and renewable energy development. We conclude that cross national comparison of landscapes of energies should be attentive to the type of landscape tradition at work in each country and account for the fact that the development of renewable energy endows these traditions with a renewed existence. Depending on the extent and the focus of the conflicts or controversies raised around RE projects, the method and focus of the analysis shall differ.

Emerging Renewable Energy Landscapes in Southern European Countries

We explore the process of emergence of renewable energy landscapes in various countries in southern Europe, focusing on the tensions this has caused, on the role of the institutional settings in the different countries and on evolving landscape values and approaches. We present a thorough analysis of the heterogeneous and multidimensional process of construction of energy landscapes and explore the different kinds of energy landscape emerging today. We then explain the structure of the book and conclude by setting out some of the challenges ahead for renewable energy planning.

Energy Transitions and Potentials for Democratic Change

This chapter sets forth the critical (in)sight made possible by the book’s inquiry into current conduct of energy transition. Placing the sights derived from our inquiry side by side, it shows that ‘renewable energy resource’, ‘market’, ‘economic instrument’, ‘technological demonstration’, ‘scale’, and ‘horizon’ should all be regarded as constructed categories, which incorporate and foster definite and situated politics. While revisiting what transitioning means, the chapter makes clear that a relational analysis has a systemic reach because it allows acknowledgment of the consequences of this politics and engagement with the implications of current energy transition processes. It concludes with proposing the idea of ‘transition potential’ and suggesting ways of sustaining energy transition potentials that are more democratic.

The Temporalities of Energy Transition Processes

This chapter provides a critical inquiry into the processes of time-making and agreeing upon collective horizons for the energy transition. A broad range of academic literature looks at the energy transition as an interval, a ‘matter of timing’ (historical drivers, pace of the transition), in which distant futures and anticipatory attitudes steer the way in which to bridge a gap. Different from this, this chapter develops a pragmatic framework which approaches the energy transition as a process of change in which new assemblages and new durations are performed. Analysing different case studies in France and Germany, it shows that ‘nearness’ (recent past and near future) has a major influence on the steering of energy transition processes because it is a disputed zone for selecting, renaming entities from different times, and agreeing upon new enduring assemblages.

The Politics of Some Policy Instruments

This chapter offers a detailed sociological perspective on the role of investment-oriented policy instruments (subsidies, fixed tariffs, tenders) in triggering and shaping the recent development of renewable energies in three countries (France, Germany, and Tunisia). Bringing together recent developments in STS (concerned markets, capitalisation), it shows that, despite their economic framing, these instruments trigger processes which deal with multiple values. They also sustain the emergence of collectives concerned with their effects—called their milieu—which they become co-dependent upon. Such processes lead to iterative adjustments and developments that carry with them their own politics. While they sustain the emergence of political ends beyond those directly foregrounded by these instruments, they also prove to be very unevenly equipped to address emergent concerns.

Transitioning Through Markets

This chapter offers a critical examination of the conduct of market-based energy transition. Drawing on four case studies from France—tree stumps as conventional fuelwood, non-residential Photovoltaic (PV) production, the development of ‘smart home’ infrastructure and the market valuation of residential load shedding—the chapter takes a market studies approach and offers fine-grained accounts of how markets work in practice. Unsurprisingly, the four cases presented here illustrate ways in which markets can lead to positive or negative outcomes in both energy change achievements and participation in steering these changes. They suggest that the potential of markets in relationship to the energy transition depend notably on what the state decides to make of them.