The role of scenarios, models and future-knowledge in energy policy stability and change

| 25.11.2024, 6:15 pm, IG 1.314 (IG-Farben-Haus) | Prof. Dr. Stefan Aykut (University of Hamburg) |

Forecasts and scenarios are ubiquitous in energy debates: commonly calculated using energy system models, they are employed by governments, administrations and civil society actors to identify problems, choose between potential solutions, and justify or legitimize specific forms of political intervention. Ongoing debates about ‘energy transitions’ have renewed scholarly interest in the role of such ‘foreknowledge’ in energy policy and in its potential to contribute to the transformation of energy systems worldwide. The talk contributes to these debates through a historic study on the evolution of epistemic practices of foreknowledge-making, and their relation to the emergence and structuring of ‘energy policy’ as an autonomous policy domain in France and Germany. Bringing together two strands of literature – work in the anthropology of politics on ‘policy assemblages’, and STS research on the ‘performative’ effects of knowledge – the talk examines how ways of assembling energy systems in energy modelling, and of bringing together policy networks in forecasting exercises, either reinforce path-dependences and lock-in, or enable alternatives and policy change.

Stefan Aykut is a professor in Sociology at University of Hamburg. The central focus of his research and teaching revolves around society’s engagement with ecological issues, particularly climate change. Stefan Aykut is interested in understanding how ecological crises are interpreted scientifically, politically addressed, and potentially catalyze processes of social change while his research emphasizes studies on global climate governance, ecological transformation processes, and the institutionalization of global ecological boundaries in various societal domains, such as finance and national legal systems.