Renewable Energies

Matthias Gross is professor of Environmental Sociology at Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Leipzig, and, by joint appointment, the University of Jena, Germany. His recent research focusses on the evolution of alternative energy systems, the centrality of ignorance in engineering, and experimental practices in society. His most recent monograph is Ignorance and Surprise: Science, Society, and Ecological Design (2010, MIT Press).Rüdiger Mautz is senior research scientist at the Sociological Research Institute of Göttingen (SOFI), Germany. His recent research concentrates on energy system transitions and the social dynamics of renewable energies. His most recent book (together with A. Byzio and W. Rosenbaum) is Auf dem Weg zur Energiewende: Die Stromproduktion aus erneuerbaren Energien in Deutschland (2008, Universitätsverlag Göttingen).

• 1. Introduction: The next great experiment 2. Energy and Society: Energetic foundations of sociology 3. Contemporary Social Theories of Energy Transitions 4. Wind, Solar, and Biomass in Sociotechnical Transition 5. Renewable Energy from Below the Ground 6. Political Regulation and New Forms of Environmental Governance 7. Energies in Conflict: New restraints and old obstacles 8. Integrating Renewable Energies into Existing Electricity Systems 9. Conclusion: Nonknowledge and Exnovation as Progress

'The ongoing transition to renewable energy sources is much more than a substitution of fossil fuels by alternative energy carriers. The great merit of this book is to shed light on the interdependency of new forms of energy provision with profound changes in our societies and to show that social sciences are essential for understanding this challenge.' - Harald Rohracher, Professor of Technology and Social Change, Linköping UniversityIt is a great merit of this book to alert to the effects of the energy transition as a real world experiment. […] Gross and Mautz clarify that such real world experiments cannot be assessed with classical tools of risk assessments since there are no models or reliable data available to cope with the complexity of the processes involved. Therefore, a high level of ignorance is involved so that trust in experts and politics becomes ever more important. – Christian Büscher, Technology Assessment: Theory and Practice