3. Introducing the Problem
• How do myths and narratives become embedded within the
fabric of national identity, scholastic disciplines, the policy realm,
economic practices, and everyday life with regards to energy?
• Electric utilities are key institutional actors in both facilitating
and constraining our global energy transition.
• Analyzing the mechanisms by which energy utilities engage with
and convey information to the public is crucial to understanding
this process.
4. Renewable Energy in Arizona
• 15% Renewable electricity by 2025
• Typically met through large scale solar
• Distributed carve out
5. Pilot Study
Conducted with one regulated electric utility in Arizona
over 4 months
• Primary materials: To understand the cultural
artifacts currently in circulation. 10 Webpages, 4
newsletters, 2 billboards, 1 comic book and 1
museum exhibit with 2 related articles.
• Interviews: To understand the process of
representation making and utility employee visions
6. Research Inquiries
• What processes do utility companies go through when
marketing renewable energy programs to the public?
• What is the content in the message and how does the
delivery system of these materials impact the message?
• How do publics understand and contribute to such
processes and products?
• How do collective understandings influence policy
feedback loops?
7. Sociotechnical Imaginaries
• mechanisms and institutions which allow ideas
to emerge and circulate
• the mixing up of meanings as they are taken up in society
• performative
• an ongoing process
Materiality
• The ability of things to make impacts outside of human
manipulation or meaning.
• Yet also the combination of these things within the
complex assemblages that constitute everyday life
18. So What?
• Electric utilities are one of the ways in which publics
come to learn about renewable energy
• The fleeting nature of these materials does not
necessarily force thought unless there is a recurring
disruption within a routinized everyday experience.
• Presented as a choice, not an inevitability or a
necessity.
19. Implications
• Contributes to the public understanding of science,
by privileging alternative ways of knowing such as
the affective and the imaginative.
• Strives to comprehend the performativity wrapped
up in energy transitions and the complex
assemblages of energy users, media, utility
companies, nature, regulatory bodies, idealized
cultures, and socio-technical systems.
• Examines the links between policymaking, electric
utilities, and publics.
20. Future Work
• Shifting my gaze to Italian community renewable
energy projects
• What are the ways in which citizens and electric
utility companies interact with each other to create
community projects and in doing so adopt,
reconfigure, and reject dominant discourses, while
contributing to a broader social understanding of
renewable energy?
