Malcolm Eames

Negotiating contested visions and place-specific expectations of the hydrogen economy

Abstract This paper explores the role of the ‘hydrogen economy’ as a guiding vision encompassing multiple contested technological futures, value judgements and problem framings. Hydrogen visions draw upon six overarching and competing narrative themes: power and independence; community empowerment and democratisation; ecotopia; hydrogen as technical fix; inevitability and technical progress; and ‘staying in the race’. In other words the hydrogen economy possesses great interpretive flexibility. This, it is argued, is the key to hydrogens rhetorical power, allowing it to become a space in which divergent interests and agendas are promoted. Turning to issues of scale and place, the case of London is used to document the dynamics of expectations: how the open flexible guiding vision of a hydrogen economy must inevitably be re-invented and grounded in local agendas and contexts if its promise is to become realised.

Environmental inequalities: reflections on a transdisciplinary seminar series

In a previous special issue of Local Environment on environmental justice (EJ) in the UK (Volume 10, no. 4, 2005), the arrival of the terminology and ideas of EJ into Europe, and particularly into the UK, was marked and welcomed. Across a set of papers covering issues of flooding, pollution, traffic, waste, gender and deprivation, it was shown how established concepts and concerns of EJ were emerging in a new social, cultural and political context, integrating elements of the long established North American discourse into sometimes quite different environmental activist traditions and institutional settings. Two distinctive features emphasised in the 2005 special issue (Bulkeley and Walker 2005) were: (i) a radical broadening of the scope of the EJ frame to include far more than the place-based race and pollution agenda of the US tradition (as demonstrated in a wide ranging research and evidence review on environmental and social justice in the UK; Lucas et al. 2004) and (ii) the assimilation of at least some elements of this EJ frame into the concerns and work of policy communities, making strategic links with a range of existing sustainability, social exclusion and health inequalities agendas (Chalmers and Colvin 2005). Although the collection of papers concentrated on the work of geographers, it was clear that advancing this re-contextualised version of EJ would need to be a thoroughly transdisciplinary enterprise, bringing together the expertise of multiple academic disciplines, multiple non-governmental groups and multiple policy communities. Local Environment Vol. 13, No. 8, 663–667, December 2008

Towards a Sustainable Energy Future: Participatory Foresight and Appraisal as a Response to Managing Uncertainty and Contested Social Values

In January 2004, the UK Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor Sir David King was reported as describing climate change as ‘the most severe problem that we are facing today — more serious even than the threat of terrorism’ (King, 2004). In the post 9/11 world it has become routine to characterise western society as increasingly dominated by concerns over risk and security. Given the context of Sir David’s comments, on a visit to the US administration, it is clear that he intended to highlight and draw into sharp relief the profound long-term and potentially catastrophic risks of human induced global climate change. Whilst some may take exception to the politically charged nature of the comparison, few would dispute the extent to which the twin concerns of climate change and energy policy are central to addressing the fundamental challenge of sustainable development: of creating an environmentally, socially and economically sustainable society for generations to come.

Retrofitting cities for tomorrow's world

The culmination of a four–year collaborative research project undertaken by leading UK universities, in partnership with city authorities, prominent architecture firms, and major international consultants, Retrofitting Cities for Tomorrow′s World explores the theoretical and practical aspects of the transition towards sustainability in the built environment that will occur in the years ahead. The emphasis throughout is on emerging systems innovations and bold new ways of imagining and re–imagining urban retrofitting, set within the context of futures–based thinking. The concept of urban retrofitting has gained prominence within both the research and policy arenas in recent years. While cities are often viewed as a source of environmental stress and resource depletion they are also hubs of learning and innovation offering enormous potential for scaling up technological responses. But city–level action will require a major shift in thinking and a scaling up of positive responses to climate change and the associated threats of environmental and social degradation. Clearly the time has come for a more coordinated, planned, and strategic approach that will allow cities to transition to a sustainable future. This book summarizes many of the best new ideas currently in play on how to achieve those goals. - Reviews the most promising ideas for how to approach planning and coordinating a more sustainable urban future by 2050 through retrofitting existing structures - Explores how cities need to govern for urban retrofit and how future urban transitions and pathways can be managed, modeled and navigated - Offers inter–disciplinary insights from international contributors from both the academic and professional spheres - Develops a rigorous conceptual framework for analyzing existing challenges and fostering innovative ways of addressing those challenges Retrofitting Cities for Tomorrow′s World is must–reading for academic researchers, including postgraduates insustainability, urban planning, environmental studies, economics, among other fields. It is also an important source of fresh ideas and inspiration for town planners, developers, policy advisors, and consultants working within the field of sustainability, energy, and the urban environment.