The future of energy systems is one of the central policy challenges facing industrial countries. This challenge is complex and multifaceted. Energy systems are among the largest human enterprises, comprising 9 of the 12 most heavily capitalized companies in the world. They form the heart of the technological arrangements around which contemporary industrial economies are organized. Efforts to transform energy systems involve changes, therefore, not only to energy technologies and prices but also to the broader social and economic assemblages that are built around energy production and consumption. Yet energy planning and policy rarely account for these broader dimensions of energy change. Two recent US energy reports illustrate this trend: the US National Academy of Engineering's study, America's Energy Future, and the US Department of Energy's recent review of its programs (NAE, Citation2009; DOE, Citation2012). These reports form the most comprehensive analyses of the US energy policy in the past decade. Yet both reduce energy systems to remarkably narrow configurations of energy technologies, the prices at which these technologies can deliver energy in a useful form, and the carbon emissions they release. The result is stunted energy debates that systematically underemphasize the meaning and consequences of energy systems and their changes for human societies and provide limited opportunities for people other than energy engineers, bureaucrats, and economists to make influential contributions to energy policy deliberations.

We must do better. Energy debates need to be informed by robust empirical and theoretical inquiries into what current and future energy changes will mean for diverse groups of people across the planet (see e.g. Abramsky Citation2010). Responding to this challenge, the essays in this collection explore how the social and the technological are intertwined in contemporary efforts to transform energy systems. The essays are informed by and indebted to the growing body of scholarship on socio-technological systems, much of which has been developed through analyses of energy systems (see, especially, Hughes, Citation1983; Nye, Citation1990, Citation1998; Hecht, Citation1998, Citation2012; Geels, Citation2005). Energy systems are socio-technological systems that involve not only machines, pipes, mines, refineries, and devices but also the humans who design and make technologies, develop and manage routines, and use and consume energy. In turn, energy systems include financial networks, workforces and the schools necessary to train them, institutions for trading in energy, roads, regulatory commissions, land-use rules, city neighborhoods, and companies as well as social norms and values that assure their proper functioning. Anyone with a toddler, for example, knows that a key element of parenting now involves teaching children how to live safely among highly dangerous energy technologies: “Don't stick your finger in the outlet!” and “Don't run into the street!”

The value of analyzing energy changes through the lens of socio-technological systems stems from the ability to make visible important aspects of energy transformation that go unrecognized and unacknowledged in other analytical approaches. These include the social processes that stimulate and manage energy transformation, the social changes that accompany shifts in energy technologies, and the social outcomes that flow from the organization and operation of novel energy systems. Energy systems can only change when and if people make choices, whether these agents are business managers, policy officials, scientists and engineers, or consumers. In turn, changes in energy technologies reshape social practices, values, relationships, and institutions, such as new business models, forms of work, and ways of knowing and living. Over time, these changes can contribute to creating or reinforcing unequal distributions of power and wealth in industrial societies. This raises important normative questions. Who will comprise the energy haves and have-nots of the twenty-first century? Who will control access to affordable, reliable, sustainable energy supplies and who will not? Who will benefit from new energy systems, who will lose, and whose lives and livelihoods will be put at risk?

Analyzing these processes, the essays reflect on three critical, intersecting aspects of energy transformation that socio-technological systems perspectives uniquely address. The first is the idea of energy infrastructures. What does it mean, the essays ask, that energy systems are at once relatively hidden from public scrutiny and yet deeply structuring of social and economic arrangements that can stifle alternatives without our realizing it? The second is the idea of energy epistemics. Who knows about energy systems, what and how do they know, and whose knowledge counts in governing and reshaping energy futures? The third is the idea of energy justice. What does it mean to implement a just energy transformation that will neither perpetuate the existing negative impacts of energy production and use nor create new ones?

Energy Systems in Flux

Contemporary energy systems often appear remarkably stable and resilient. Indeed, the stability and reliability of supply and demand are often viewed as an essential hallmark of energy systems, providing a foundation for the growth of robust industries and prosperous economies. The appearance of stability, however, belies the enormous work it takes to maintain steady flows of energy, including massive ongoing investments in new energy infrastructure like developing oil fields and constructing electric power plants. Indeed, in 2011, the International Energy Agency estimated that $38 trillion in investments will be required to meet global energy demand through 2035, even if we continue to rely heavily on fossil fuels (IEA, Citation2011). More will be required to finance large-scale deployment of renewable technologies. In a highly uncertain financial and political environment, companies, governments, and societies confront major policy and business choices regarding whether, where, and how much to invest in coal, natural gas, renewable energy, unconventional oil, and carbon sequestration projects respectively.

Thus, despite an appearance of stability, perhaps more than at any other time in the past half-century, the core foundations of contemporary energy systems are in flux along numerous dimensions. Consider the following changes at work:

•	Concerns about the potential impacts of climate change have given rise to scientific and political discourses motivating major policy initiatives and financial investments across the globe designed to foster the adoption of renewable energy technologies and thereby reduce carbon emissions while creating green jobs. As a consequence of rapid cost reductions in wind and photovoltaic technologies, these initiatives are poised to accelerate over the next decade. Nonetheless, tensions are emerging around different approaches to building renewable energy plants and their implications for ecosystems, worker health, and communities, including utility-scale and community-scale facilities and distributed energy systems (on solar energy, see e.g. Aanesen et al., Citation2012; on wind, see e.g. Cowell et al., Citation2011).
•	The advent of new hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” technologies that enable the extraction of natural gas from shale formations has created a glut in the US markets, driving prices to extraordinarily low levels. This unexpected expansion of supply has already led to substitution of gas for coal in the production of electricity, the cancelation of plans in some locations to build new coal plants, and the closure of some existing plants. At the same time, public protests against the use of fracking technologies have accelerated. A new front in social conflicts over energy has opened around concerns about the short-term health hazards of chemicals used in the fracking process, which are opaque to the public because of industry secrecy, and the still large ongoing carbon emissions associated with a surge in gas-fired electricity production, which perpetuates dependence on fossil fuels.
•	New discoveries of conventional oil have dwindled to a trickle, forcing oil producers to adopt a range of new production methods, including drilling in deeper offshore waters and exploiting unconventional oil sources, such as Venezuelan heavy crude and Canadian tar sands. Producing oil with these technologies is significantly more expensive than in conventional oil fields. Combined with the increased dependency of many oil producing countries on this resource to support ambitious state projects and budgets, this cost has helped push up oil prices rapidly over the past decade, with little sign of this trend being reversed. Unconventional oil production also poses much higher environmental risks. These include climate change impacts as these forms of oil have higher carbon content on a per unit energy basis and ecological damage from the use of complex, often poorly understood or ill-regulated technologies in novel and difficult-to-work-in environments, as illustrated by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
•	As a result of elevated oil prices, automobile manufacturers, policy leaders, and consumers are once again focused on achieving energy efficiency in transportation fleets, including the growing availability and adoption of hybrid, electric, and natural gas vehicles. The USA also recently adopted new fuel economy standards of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. High oil prices have also resulted in substantial social dislocation. For low-income communities in the USA, gasoline costs often comprise a significant proportion of total household spending expenditures, and high prices reduce available funds for other necessities. Poor communities in developing countries also face growing food prices partly due to the high costs of oil used in agricultural production as well as to the intensifying competition for land and commodities between biofuels with food.
•	The meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant following a tsunami in March 2011 has called into question for many communities the viability of nuclear energy at a time when many in the industry expected a renaissance. Numerous countries in Europe have decided to phase out nuclear power, the USA has largely halted what appeared to be the first new nuclear plants to be constructed in decades, and Japan has faced severe public backlash against the idea of restarting its nuclear facilities. Widespread protests have also confronted the Indian government's decision to continue forward with its plans to rapidly escalate the construction of nuclear power plants in the wake of the accident.

An energy transition is, therefore, clearly underway. Significantly more uncertain, however, is the timing, pathways, and forms this transition will take.

All of this renders particularly acute the need for energy policy to become much more critically reflective about the nature and implications of energy transitions (see, especially, the Laird essay in this collection). Traditionally, energy transitions have been understood in terms of fuel sources, such as the transition from wood to coal, coal to oil, or oil to renewables. Viewed from a socio-technological systems perspective, this framing of energy transitions looks naïve at best. On one hand, transitions in fuels are inevitably accompanied by widespread social, economic, and political transformations that must also be factored into assessments of energy change. Even more importantly, neither fuels nor their associated technologies of extraction, generation, and use determine the social and economic forms that energy systems take over time. Rather, these technologies are interpretively flexible, like all technologies, and can be shaped into a range of diverse energy systems. Thus, the key choices involved in energy transitions are not so much between different fuels but between different forms of social, economic, and political arrangements built in combination with new energy technologies.

In other words, the challenge is not simply what fuel to use but how to organize a new energy system around that fuel. Consider solar photovoltaics. Price declines among photovoltaic modules have pushed the solar industry almost exclusively toward photovoltaics rather than other solar technologies, such as concentrated solar thermal plants or Stirling engines. This growing emphasis has several implications for societies. For example, there is a new race among companies, communities, and governments to determine whether utility-scale, community-scale, or rooftop-scale photovoltaic installations will form the heart of future solar energy developments. From the perspective of utilities, large-scale installations have clear advantages: they operate with economies of scale, are easier to integrate into electricity grids, and generate revenues that flow almost exclusively to utilities. Conversely, from the perspective of electricity consumers, small-scale, distributed installations can currently deliver energy more cheaply (due, in part, to the fact that they do not have to account for the costs of building and maintaining the electricity grid and also to significant policy incentives) and offer individuals and households a more personal, hands-on relationship with the production of energy. Utilities are thus confronted with the prospect of rapidly increasing numbers of households and businesses withdrawing at least a portion of their electricity demand from the grid. Coupled with net metering laws that require utilities to credit households for electricity they produce that exceeds their own consumption, utilities face what one Arizona energy regulator has termed the prospect of “cascading natural deregulation” that fuels a precipitous decline in energy consumption and thus threatens utilities' core financial models (SWEIF, Citation2010). Thus, utilities and their investors have significant incentives to favor government policies, business plans, and technology designs that discourage the development of distributed installations in favor of industrialized, large-scale plants that may have much greater ecosystem and land-use impacts.

Or consider another example, the introduction of charging stations for electric vehicles. Even with their current capabilities, a roughly 30 mile range, battery-powered electric vehicles offer a less polluting, lower carbon emitting, and more efficient alternative to gasoline powered vehicles for the shorter distances typical of daily commuting. Such vehicles would primarily be on the road in the early morning and, again, in the late afternoon or evening. Otherwise, they are stationary, parked in the garage at home (at night) or at work (during the day). The choice of which period to charge these vehicles has enormous consequences, however, for the ways in which electricity is sourced and supplied. Today, most electric vehicles are sold in combination with a home charging station that enables their owners to charge them at night, when electricity rates are at their lowest. Yet, as a long-term solution, this has the potential to lock in the need for large amounts of new electricity production at night, thus encouraging the retention of fossil fuels or the large-scale expansion of wind or nuclear power. For electric vehicles to be compatible with solar energy, they need to be charged during the day, which means the development of large-scale charging capacity at workplaces, parking sites, and battery swap stations for those drivers who are willing to exchange their batteries. Alternatively, storage systems need to be developed to capture and release renewable energy at night. These options have implications for who will pay the cost of infrastructure (consumers, companies, or governments), the design and lay-out of urban areas and buildings, and the creation of markets for particular forms of renewable energy versus fossil fuels.

Understood in these terms, energy transitions are about who benefits and who is put at risk. They are about the power of regulatory institutions, the structure of markets, and the distribution of wealth. And they are about how people of all sorts work and live. Without understanding this, policy-makers, researchers, activists, and investors hoping to direct energy transitions are likely to encounter political opposition and may contribute to unintended adverse impacts. When the Obama Administration chose to place oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico under a moratorium, it jeopardized the jobs not only of those who worked on the rigs but also those in the adjacent states whose livelihoods depended on the oil industry, from boat owners to wire manufacturers to hotel owners. The resulting threat of economic decline helped mobilize a strong public uprising against the moratorium, which ended sooner than initially imagined. Yet government policies and industrial renewal could have followed a different pathway toward what many communities, unions, and activists call a “just transition”. For example, faced with a similar situation in the 1990s when Germany dramatically reduced the burning of coal to generate electricity, the country used widespread programs to retrain coal industry workers to find new jobs, sometimes in renewable energy. This assured greater justice in changing from coal and broke up historically log-jammed constituencies.

Large-scale energy transitions like those discussed above are some of the most momentous decisions that societies ever make. They will likely define much of the local, national, and global politics of the next 50 years and beyond. It is critical, therefore, that societies grapple with the full ramifications of these transitions and approach them as the complex socio-technological system transformations that they really are. In particular, societies must define clear standards against which to define and measure successful energy transitions. Price and system stability are important; so are carbon emissions. But if the goal is to change the organization and operation of the largest and most influential human enterprises on the planet toward more sustainable, just alternatives, our ambitions should demand more than simply reducing carbon emissions. Re-envisioning energy is a potentially powerful contributor to improving human well-being around the globe through the creation of thriving, innovative, sustainable communities. Approaching energy system change from that perspective could generate a very different policy conversation about the future of energy.

Social Dimensions in Energy Change

The essays in this collection reveal insights into the complexities of energy system change that can be grouped under three overarching themes. The first theme is energy infrastructure. By infrastructure, we mean, following Edwards et al. (Citation2009), “big, durable, well functioning systems and services” that are typically hidden from public view yet highly significant in structuring social, political, and economic organization. Infrastructure is foundational to modern energy systems; its durability means that it can exert influence for many decades. In their original state, coal, oil, and natural gas are buried in hard-to-reach places, difficult to transport, and hard to use. It is only the vast, industrialized, large-scale deployment of drills, mines, pipelines, storage facilities, railroads, tankers, refineries, and distribution systems that render fossil fuels seemingly cheap and abundant for consumers. Many renewable energy systems exhibit a similar reliance on large-scale manufacturing facilities, long-distance transmission wires, and a proliferation of consumer appliances. Take away key aspects of energy infrastructure, and the energy system can come crashing down quickly, bringing numerous other systems down with it (Nye, Citation2010). During modern electricity blackouts, for example, computer systems shut down, elevators and trains cease to run, and hospitals and factories may have to cut back on their activity. These functional elements of infrastructure are well recognized and even topics of policy debate, although long periods can elapse between major policy deliberations regarding any given infrastructure. The social consequences of these systems are less frequently appreciated. As science, technology, and society scholars have demonstrated, how we build and use infrastructure shape and reflect everything from our political systems, working patterns, living arrangements, leisure practices, health outcomes, and environmental conditions (Hughes, Citation1983; Nye, Citation1990; Winner, Citation1980; Kaijser and van der Vleuten, Citation2006).

Several of the essays help build a critical understanding of energy infrastructures and apply the resulting insights to renewable energy technologies. In his historical analysis of coal canals, oil pipelines, and electricity transmission wires, Jones demonstrates that design choices have financial, geographic, and environmental consequences. Iles argues that two possible transitions in our transportation infrastructure—the substitution of biofuels and electric motors for oil-powered automobiles—offer a range of implementation pathways that are more and less sustainable. Whether these design decisions are made by industry officials or consumer groups and how they are implemented are likely to shape the consequences of these changes. Through separate life-cycle approaches to photovoltaic cells and rare-earth mining, Mulvaney and Raman each reveal that renewable energy systems can display environmentally damaging patterns of infrastructural organization parallel to those of the fossil fuel energy systems they purport to replace in a more sustainable fashion. The use and potential release of toxic chemicals in photovoltaic cell manufacturing and the reliance of wind and solar energy on rare earth materials mined in unsustainable fashion both indicate the need to pay greater attention to the infrastructure requirements of renewable energy systems. Similarly, Levidow et al. contend that path dependence is not simply a reality for our fossil fuel systems; their study of biofuel policies shows that previous investments shape renewable energy infrastructures as well. Moore analyzes the envisioning process for the ambitious Desertec solar plan, illustrating the need for tools that can aid system designers in navigating the complex social and political landscapes in which they are operating. Collectively, our authors show that it is not simply a question of whether to build infrastructure for renewable energy systems but rather how to approach such a task and what forms of intertwined social, economic, political, and technological arrangements get built and/or evolve to produce new forms of energy production and consumption.

The materiality of our energy systems results from how people think about and understand these systems. Therefore, a second focus of these essays is the knowledge practices governing energy systems. The successful operation of contemporary energy networks depends on highly complex and specialized knowledge to identify oil and gas reserves miles beneath the earth's surface, integrate hundreds of producers and millions of consumers in vast electricity grids, and manufacture many technologies from generators to photovoltaic cells. These epistemological developments are normative as well as functional (Ezrahi, Citation1990; Porter, Citation1996; Jasanoff, Citation2004). For example, ideas of risk and opportunity are pervasive in the energy sector, and these calculations often reflect the biases of particular groups. The desirable path forward often looks very different depending on whether one is a policy-maker, an energy entrepreneur, or a local citizen.

Several essays in this volume further our understanding of what we refer to as energy epistemics. Laird argues that the concept of “energy transitions” has been used so narrowly in major US policy discussions that it may no longer be appropriate for capturing the broad social consequences of energy systems change outlined in these essays. He recommends that we either abandon the term or learn to use it in a more nuanced manner. Hess draws our attention to the plurality of possible transitions, emphasizing the convergences and divergences between a focus on sustainability and climate change mitigation, on the one hand, and a transition based on resilience and climate change adaptation on the other. Jasanoff and Kim demonstrate that powerful and enduring socio-technical imaginaries shape the ways in which nation-states understand and allocate the risks and opportunities in large projects such as nuclear power. In a related vein, Sovacool and Brossman explore the role of fantasies arising from particular energy sources in enabling and perpetuating transitions. Essays by Ottinger, Phadke, and Bhadra continue the interest in energy epistemics but focus on bottom-up knowledge rather than the top-down dictates of policy-makers and cultural brokers. Like Mulvaney and Raman, Ottinger notes that renewable energy developments can have many of the same problems as those based on fossil fuels. She argues that one step in rectifying this situation is to give greater credence to the “street science” of local communities within debates about the health and environmental concerns of wind power. Bhadra examines the role of citizens and activists in recasting the politics of nuclear power in India. Seeking to produce more just outcomes for renewable energy developments, Phadke reports on a “landscape symposium” model she has developed for engaging citizens in the decision-making process for wind power. Collectively, these essays demonstrate that whose knowledge is considered relevant has profound consequences for the shape of energy systems.

Energy justice is a third theme that cuts across all the essays in this volume. A fundamental but often overlooked dimension, energy justice addresses the serious and conflict-laden normative and ethical issues raised by energy production and consumption, including equitable access to energy, the fair distribution of costs and benefits, and the right to participate in choosing whether and how energy systems will change. Energy justice thus involves “choices about what kinds of energy systems to build for the future, where to build them, and how to distribute their benefits, costs, and risks” (Miller, Citation2012). The distribution of energy production and use and their impacts is highly unequal, as are the resulting economic and political benefits (O'Rourke and Connolly, Citation2003). Many Native American households on reservations still lack electricity whereas affluent urban residents can buy and drive electric vehicles as a luxury. Human rights are also at the heart of energy justice: energy is essential to human life. Political systems have only rarely defined energy as a basic right, yet in many cases they provide strong rules that both facilitate broad distribution of low-cost energy and make it difficult to disconnect consumers, even when they fail to pay their bills. Energy justice also poses questions of procedural justice. Many changes are currently taking place with little input from community and consumer voices, potentially laying the foundations of yet more injustices in future.

Together, the essays underscore that energy justice is a multi-layered phenomenon that spans energy systems from localized community controversies to national and global policy-making. For example, one crucial issue in energy justice is who has the right to choose. As demonstrated in essays by Iles, Ottinger, Phadke, and Bhadra, citizens and communities often have different perspectives on how, when, whether, and where to build energy systems than do industry executives or policy-makers. Similarly, Laird, Jasanoff and Kim, Hess, Levidow et al., and Sovacool and Brossman reveal that conceptual frameworks operating at high levels often privilege the ideas and values of certain groups while marginalizing alternative perspectives. A third common issue is that energy systems often create inequalities in the distributions of harms and benefits. As Jones, Mulvaney, and Raman argue, the dangerous pollutants associated with energy are often concentrated in locations or groups with little wealth or political power while the largest consumers of energy are often able to live without exposing themselves to such environmental contamination. Moore shows that the benefits of solar power created in the Sahara Desert will likely serve countries to the north and east while excluding those to the south. Though renewable energy has widely been linked in the popular imagination to a more just social order, these essays make it clear that such a result is not inevitable. It will require new imaginations, new procedures, and new power dynamics.

Conclusion

Making energy transitions will be one of humanity's great challenges for the twenty-first century. Whatever form they take, energy transitions will be complex socio-technological transformations that require major changes for many communities. Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, recently observed, for example, that the oil industry is ready to build the new systems necessary to fuel another century of oil consumption. Climate change will occur, he acknowledged, but ”we will adapt … It's an engineering problem, and has engineering solutions” (Tillerson, Citation2012). This is not a pretty picture. Engineering on this scale is inevitably social, political, and economic engineering as much as it is technological. Worse, humanity's track record of engineering on this scale is not strong (see, e.g. Graham, Citation1996; Scott, Citation1998). Winners and losers will be rampant, and such an approach may reinforce the very production and use patterns that have caused climate change, adding even more carbon emissions to the already vast momentum of global warming built into the planetary environment due to the past 50 years of global growth. There may be planetary boundaries beyond which societies are far less able to adapt over reasonable time frames (Rockström et al., Citation2010). Should societies be captive to the ambitions of the oil industry without extensive public debate?

Yet challenges are also opportunities. For several reasons, we (the authors of this introduction) are cautiously optimistic about the potential for building an alternative energy future that is more just and less ecologically destructive. First, with the notable exception of the fossil fuel industries, the idea of encouraging an energy transition that significantly reduces carbon emissions now has widespread social support. The motivations for seeking change are much stronger now than in previous energy crises. There is greater awareness of the possibility of disruptive conflicts if energy futures are not opened up to greater public deliberation (Figure 1).

There is also greater traction for attending to societal concerns about existing energy extraction and production, rather than just energy supply fears. In the past few years, global protests have grown around “fracking” in the natural gas industry (Ferguson and Smith, Citation2012) and the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure such as the oil sand-delivering Keystone XL pipeline and struggles over deep sea drilling (DiPeso, Citation2012). The giant profits of oil companies through the global financial crisis have undermined their credibility as socially beneficial producers of energy. The US Department of Defense has, surprisingly, emerged as a major financier of renewable energy projects, emphasizing their role in enhancing the security of military facilities and the nation in both energy independence and climate change risks (Sarewitz et al., Citation2012). Moreover, governments, industry, and investors are increasingly interested in gaining a greater share of the global energy market, worth at least $5 trillion, by pursuing promising alternatives. China is a case in point, as it has made tremendous investments in solar and wind technologies in the hope of dominating world markets (although other nations, especially South Korea, may take turns in leading the race to produce the world's cheapest photovoltaic panels; see Reuters, Citation2012).

Third, the development of new infrastructures for alternative energy systems creates opportunities for insisting that energy designs and decisions explicitly incorporate an awareness of the social dimensions of energy transitions. While retrofitting existing infrastructures can be enormously expensive, many benefits can be achieved without greatly increasing the cost of new systems when incorporated at the design stage. Policy-makers, industries, communities, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are starting to think more critically about how energy infrastructures are being designed, built, and rebuilt. Regulators have shown greater awareness that multiple trajectories of energy development co-exist and that increasing diversity rather than settling on a single dominant system is a good outcome. Promisingly, this critique is already being applied to renewable energy technologies, whereas fossil fuels went largely unchallenged until long after their entrenchment. As seen in community, union, and NGO responses to the siting of wind and solar farms, or the development of specific technologies such as electric cars, engaged publics increasingly want a say in how energy is delivered, for what uses, where, and to whom.

Fourth, there is increasing societal interest in democratic participation in technological change. Recent research has focused on innovative, deliberative models of public engagement in scientific and technological decision-making (Sclove, Citation1995; Kleinman, Citation2000; Iles, Citation2013; Phadke, Citation2013). Current efforts tend to focus on individual technologies rather than complex technological and social systems (Graffy and Booth, Citation2008) and usually involve relatively small-scale public engagement (Miller and Moore, Citation2011), rather than seeking to understand and enhance the capacity for deliberative systems to enable society-wide conversations about energy policy (Dryzek, Citation2010). Nonetheless, such efforts suggest an alternative model for technological development that replaces narrow technology assessments with broader socio-technological systems assessments. Rather than seeing communities as a barrier to change, this research demonstrates that active engagement with a wide range of social actors can produce outcomes that are more democratic and legitimate and that account for a wider array of political and economic factors in technological change. Several of our contributors note that communities can be valuable partners in renewable energy planning, not simply barriers to energy development.

Energy is a harbinger for a new era in human history. We are now moving from an era of constructing large-scale technologies to one of re-constructing complex, socio-technological systems that link energy to a wide range of other systems such as water, transportation, food production, and housing. This transition will challenge engineers, societies, policy-makers, and the social and policy sciences to develop new approaches to innovation that integrate both technological and human dimensions together. We must recognize the need to go beyond the development of new gadgets like the iPhone to see the ways in which society is constituted with its technological systems and to understand that to change technological systems is to change who we are, how we behave, and how we live. Langdon Winner may have been right when he described society as sleep-walking through fundamental changes in the technological constitution of twentieth century society (Winner, Citation1986), but it is hard to imagine that we will sleep-walk through the magnitude of energy systems change now envisioned. Only by being attentive to the social dimensions of our energy systems can we hope to stimulate genuine inventiveness in how we approach the challenge of governing an energy transition.