UK bioenergy innovation priorities: Making expectations credible in state-industry arenas

AbstractThe UK government has promoted bioenergy for several policy aims. Future expectations for bioenergy innovation encompass various pathways and their potential benefits. Some pathways have been relatively favoured by specific state-industry arrangements, which serve as ‘arenas of expectations’. Through these arrangements, some expectations have been made more credible, thus justifying and directing resource allocation. Conversely, to incentivise private-sector investment, government has sought credibility for its commitment to bioenergy innovation. These dual efforts illustrate the reciprocal character of promise-requirement cycles, whereby promises are turned into requirements for state sponsors as well as for innovators.Collective expectations have been shaped by close exchanges between state bodies, industry and experts. As promoters build collective expectations, their credibility has been linked with UK economic and environmental aims. When encountering technical difficulties or delays in earlier expectations, pathways and their benefits have been broadened, especially through new arenas—as grounds to allocate considerable state investment. Thus the concept ‘arenas of expectations’ helps to explain how some pathways gain favour as innovation priorities

Reframing nuclear power in the UK energy debate: Nuclear power, climate change mitigation and radioactive waste

In the past decade, human influence on the climate through increased use of fossil fuels has become widely acknowledged as one of the most pressing issues for the global community. For the United Kingdom, we suggest that these concerns have increasingly become manifest in a new strand of political debate around energy policy, which reframes nuclear power as part of the solution to the need for low-carbon energy options. A mixed-methods analysis of citizen views of climate change and radioactive waste is presented, integrating focus group data and a nationally representative survey. The data allow us to explore how UK citizens might now and in the future interpret and make sense of this new framing of nuclear power-which ultimately centers on a risk-risk trade-off scenario. We use the term "reluctant acceptance" to describe how, in complex ways, many focus group participants discursively re-negotiated their position on nuclear energy when it was positioned alongside climate change. In the concluding section of the paper, we reflect on the societal implications of the emerging discourse of new nuclear build as a means of delivering climate change mitigation and set an agenda for future research regarding the (re)framing of the nuclear energy debate in the UK and beyond

A framework of sustainable behaviours tha can be enabled through the design of neighbourhood-scale developments

The purpose of this paper is to present, and explain, the development of a framework of sustainable behaviours that can, potentially, be enabled through the design of neighbourhood-scale developments. To be sustainable, such developments need to be technically sustainable (i.e. in terms of materials, construction methods and so on) and to support behavioural sustainability by their residents. This paper focuses on the latter. Drawn from a literature review, the paper presents eight sustainable behaviours that are argued to be enabled by specific design features of neighbourhood developments. These are the following: use less energy in the home; use less water in the home; recycle waste; maintain and encourage biodiversity and ecologically important habitats; make fewer and shorter journeys by fuel inefficient modes of transport; make essential journeys by fuel efficient modes of transport; take part in local community groups, local decision making and local formal and informal social activities and use local services, amenities and businesses. Both theory and empirical evidence underpinning the claimed relationships between the design features and the eight behaviours are presented. The framework, and accompanying explanations, are offered as tools for further research, and as references for practitioners such as urban designers, architects and planners seeking some clarity on designing for behavioural sustainability at the neighbourhood scale. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment