Challenging energy engineering undergraduates with diverse perspectives on nuclear power

As part of an introductory energy engineering undergraduate module at University College Cork, student presentations on a zero-carbon energy plan for Ireland have shown a high preference for nuclear energy, despite a complete absence of nuclear energy from the same module curriculum. Nuclear power has never been built or generated in Ireland, is currently illegal, and faces high levels of public opposition. The origins of a high preference for nuclear energy among undergraduate student engineers is therefore unclear. In response to this high preference for, but critically unengaged view of nuclear power, the authors developed a participatory learning activity for first year undergraduate engineering students to engage with a range of maximally different perspectives on nuclear power. Four different perspectives on whether Ireland needs nuclear power were presented to this year’s class: definitely yes; definitely no; maybe yes; maybe no. These perspectives involved a number of different framings of nuclear power and ranged across a spectrum from techno-economic to socio-technical. They emphasised to a greater or lesser degree issues around risk, cost, system impacts, timing, social acceptability, and sustainability. The activity took place in a room divided into four quadrants with each quadrant representing one of the four different perspectives on nuclear power. At the start of activity, students were invited to go to the quadrant that best represented their initial views. Each perspective on nuclear power was then delivered in a short expert presentation by one of the co- authors. Throughout these presentations, students were invited to remain in or move from their quadrant as they were persuaded or not by the arguments advanced. At the start of the activity, an overwhelming majority (96%) of the students indicated a yes preference with the majority of these being maybe yes (79%); at the end of the debate the total yes share had significantly decreased (to 54%), with the largest share of the lost vote moving to the maybe no category which finished at 36% (having started at 0%). Overall, there was a greater distribution of students across all four categories than at the start. Evaluations on the activity format were largely positive. Student reasons for changing their views were mostly socio-technical points specific to Ireland that included the electricity system, overall energy needs, costs and expert availability. Closing reflections introduced the idea of a wicked problem and highlighted the importance of values to questions such as “Should Ireland Go Nuclear”, i.e. avoiding an exclusively narrow scientific framing

Innovative methods of community engagement: towards a low carbon climate resilient future

The proceedings of the Innovative Methods of Community Engagement: Toward a Low Carbon, Climate Resilient Future workshop have been developed by the Imagining2050 team in UCC and the Secretariat to the National Dialogue on Climate Action (NDCA). The NDCA also funded the workshop running costs. The proceedings offer a set of recommendations and insights into leveraging different community engagement approaches and methodologies in the area of climate action. They draw from interdisciplinary knowledge and experiences of researchers for identifying, mobilizing and mediating communities. The work presented below derives from a workshop held in the Environmental Research Institute in UCC on the 17th January 2019. These proceedings are complementary to an earlier workshop also funded by the NDCA and run by MaREI in UCC, titled ‘How do we Engage Communities in Climate Action? – Practical Learnings from the Coal Face’. The earlier workshop looked more closely at community development groups and other non-statutory organizations doing work in the area of climate change

The influence of active learning model and prior knowledge choice on how long it takes to find hard-to-find relevant papers: Examining the variability of the time to discovery and the stability of its rank-orders

Tools that employ screening prioritization through active learning (AL) have accelerated the screening process significantly by ranking an unordered set of records by their predicted relevance. Failing to find a relevant paper might alter the findings of a systematic review, which highlights the importance of identifying hard-to-find relevant papers. The time to discovery (TD) measures how many records are needed to be screened to find a relevant paper, making it a useful tool for examining such papers. The main aim of this project was to investigate how the choice of the model and prior knowledge influence the TD values of the hard-to-find relevant papers and their rank orders. A simulation study was conducted mimicking the screening process on a dataset containing titles, abstracts, and labels used for a systematic review. The results demonstrated that AL model choice, and mostly the choice of the feature extractor but not the choice of prior knowledge, significantly influenced the TD values and the rank order of the TD values of the hard-to-find relevant papers. Future research should examine the characteristics of hard-to-find relevant papers to discover why they might take a long time to be found

Imagining climate resilient futures: A layered Delphi panel approach

This paper in using a novel application of the Delphi panel method, explores and consolidates the future visions of a low carbon and climate resilient future in Ireland through community-based visioning processes that emerged through co-created, deliberative approaches at local level. It embraces a visioning process that applies a transdisciplinary approach, which aims to match different visions and stakeholder needs, combining bottom-up and top-down perspectives. Community visions were articulated by means of a series of deliberative futures workshops facilitated by the transdisciplinary project research team. Through iterations of the Delphi feedback loop, the notion of deep and shallow agreement is explored to examine the spectrum of consensus to dissent around the co-developed future visions and pathways of climate action, articulated by the Irish community case study. This approach enables a critical exploration of the conventional science-policy-practice nexus through the use of innovative creative communication and engagement methods. Findings suggest that more deliberative forums which bring together a diverse range of stakeholders are needed to develop a shared vision for the future; the importance of language use and the creation of a shared vocabulary of climate action; and the power of civic imaginaries in helping to create useful future narratives

A roadmap for local deliberative engagements on transitions to net zero carbon and climate resilience

Public engagement and participation are best understood as fluid and evolving categories that embrace the many ways in which citizens collaborate on, intervene in, oppose or deliberate over matters that concern them. In recent years the role that the public occupies in climate action debates has expanded and has given rise to new knowledge co-creation practices and deliberative decision-making processes. It is increasingly acknowledged that meaningful public engagement in climate action requires well-informed, equal and inclusive processes. There is a compelling body of work internationally in support of embedding deliberative democratic practices more deeply to strengthen public engagement. In this report we explore some of these innovative practices and processes, and present the main findings from the project 'Engaging, Envisioning, and Co-Producing Pathways for a Low Carbon, Climate Resilient Ireland (Imagining2050)', which was funded by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and co-funded by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI). The aim of the project was to engage with civil society using innovative co-creation and deliberative approaches, and test these approaches, to explore and consolidate future visions of and pathways to a low-carbon and climate-resilient future in Ireland

Mapping emergent public engagement in societal transitions: a scoping review

BACKGROUND: Transition discourses are gaining prominence in efforts to imagine a future that adequately addresses the urgent need to establish low carbon and climate resilient pathways. Within these discourses the ‘public’ is seen as central to the creation and implementation of appropriate interventions. The role of public engagement in societal transformation while essential, is also complex and often poorly understood. The purpose of this paper is to enhance our understanding regarding public engagement and to address the often superficial and shallow policy discourse on this topic. MAIN TEXT: The paper offers a review of evolving literature to map emergent public engagement in processes of transition and change. We adopt a pragmatic approach towards literature retrieval and analysis which enables a cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral review. We use a scoping review process and the three spheres of transformation framework (designated as the practical, political and personal spheres) to explore trends within this complex research field. The review draws from literature from the last two decades in the Irish context and looks at emergence and evolving spaces of public engagement within various systems of change including energy, food, coastal management and flood adaptation, among others. CONCLUSIONS: The results highlight the siloed and fragmented way in which public engagement in transitions is carried and we propose a more cross-sectoral and cross-disciplinary approach which depends on bringing into dialogue often contrasting theories and perspectives. The paper also illustrates some shifting engagement approaches. For instance, nexus articles between the practical and political spheres suggest deeper forms of public engagement beyond aggregated consumer behaviour to align technological delivery with institutional and societal contexts. While most articles in the practical sphere draw largely on techno-economic insights this influence and cross-disciplinarity is likely to draw in further innovations. Nexus articles between the political and personal sphere are also drawing on shifting ideas of public engagement and largely stress the need to disrupt reductive notions of engagement and agency within our institutions. Many of these articles call attention to problems with top-down public engagement structures and in various ways show how they often undermine and marginalise different groups