Knowledge Controversies and Renewable Energy Transition: Exploring Science and Policy Debates

This dissertation explores controversies arising from policies to promote a transition to greater reliance on wind and solar power in Ontario, Canada. Drawing on conceptual frameworks from science and technology studies (STS), human geography and socio-technical transition studies, it provides new insights into the dynamics and impact of debates over the cost and environmental impacts of “new” renewable energies, as well as the role and nature of social resistance in the context of emergent concepts of energy democracy. This dissertation comprises three standalone articles (chapters 3-5). Chapter 3 uses rhetorical analysis to explore how scientific facts about wind energy’s impact on human health were co-produced by the science and policy processes. It suggests the wind and health controversy cannot be definitively settled by science because it is inextricably tied to value-based questions about how precautionary wind development should be, what should count as a valid health issue, and what constitutes valid evidence in health research and public policy. Chapter 4 explores how the (in)visibility of different causal frames of the issue of rising electricity prices was mediated through a decade of newspaper coverage in Ontario. It demonstrates how coverage framed the issue of rising electricity prices overwhelmingly as a consequence of the Green Energy and Green Economy Act, 2009, amplifying criticisms of its design and impact on consumers and the economy while diminishing the visibility of other key cost-related factors. Chapter 5 presents a comparative assessment of normative and relational frameworks of energy democracy and their different accounts of resistant publics in energy transitions. It finds normative understandings constrain imaginings of low-carbon energy futures and who legitimately participates in democracy, overlooking uncertainties and complexities inherent to transitions and their publics. Relational approaches address these shortcomings through greater attention to how energy problems and solutions are framed, how political action is performed through the articulation of contested issues, and who is disenfranchised in transition processes. Findings highlight the importance of studying in-depth the co-production and mediation of knowledge and how publics struggle to gain political authority over issues that affect them when investigating trajectories and outcomes of renewable energy transitions.

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