The infrastructural ecologies of industrial decarbonisation: Visual methods and psychosocial logics in place-based public engagement

Abstract

Major changes to land and sea infrastructure are underway to achieve decarbonisation of energy generation and industrial processes. People who live and work locally alongside energy production and industrial sites will most intensely experience the transitions. There are growing calls within the environment and climate change fields, and aligned social justice and policy research, to address how such change risks producing inequalities from the economic, spatial and political impacts. This paper presents research on public responses to industrial decarbonisation gathered from deliberative workshops carried out in Wales, UK. The paper offers a reframing of place that we term infrastructural ecologies, encapsulating the understanding of place as porous in relation to global flows whilst holding distinctive local attributes. The turn to infrastructure has shown place to involve ongoing constellations of material techno-functions entwined with psychic and sensory experiences. Change-making requires deepened understanding of how opinions are formed and remain in flux. We present a novel methodology to engage people across cognitive, emotional and affective registers. Central to the research is the use of photographs that provided tools to situate professional visions within everyday locales and meaning making as one way to level uneven power relations inherent in professionalised future visions. The paper utilises object relations theories to analyse how lively objects and psychic mechanisms are active in opinion making processes. Our discussion offers a deepened understanding of how decarbonisation of industry could align to shared goals amounting to a future that also aims to achieve social justice.