foresightConjuring clean energy: exposing green assumptions in media and academiaOzzie Zehner

Article information:To cite this document:Ozzie Zehner , (2014),"Conjuring clean energy: exposing green assumptions in media and academia", foresight, Vol. 16 Iss6 pp. 567 - 585Permanent link to this document:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/FS-11-2013-0062

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Conjuring clean energy: exposing greenassumptions in media and academia

Ozzie Zehner

Ozzie Zehner is based atthe Science in HumanCulture, NorthwesternUniversity, Evanston,Illinois, USA.

AbstractPurpose – This paper aims to present uncomfortable questions about the viability of alternative energytechnologies, which arise during economic contraction but are scarcely addressed within media andacademia.Design/methodology/approach – The author identifies and graphically illustrates distinct differencesbetween media coverage of energy production and energy reduction strategies during an oil priceshock beginning in 2003.Findings – In writing about alternative energy production, journalists used promising storytelling andfuture-oriented language to frame these technologies as solutions to climate change. Meanwhile,journalists described energy reduction strategies using mundane language anchored in the presentand not as strongly linked to climate change. For example, one in seven articles associated alternativeenergy production with energy independence. Only 1 in 5,000 linked energy reduction strategies toenergy independence.Research limitations/implications – These observations loosely illustrate a pervasive energyproduction ethos (a reflexive network including behaviors, symbols, expectations and materialconditions). Considering this ethos during a time of economic contraction exposes hidden assumptionsabout alternative energy technologies and the fossil fuels that they are expected to replace, as well asnumerous unasked questions. For instance, does the high cost of alternative energy ultimately revealhidden fossil fuel use behind the curtain? Where does the high cost of alternative energy ultimatelyaccrue, if not to fossil fuels (via labor, materials, etc.)?Practical implications – This paper presents questions that journalists, policymakers, energyresearchers and students can use to critically assess energy narratives.Originality/value – This paper critically explores numerous assumptions, which undergird belief thatrenewable energy production will ease hardship during transitions toward contraction and degrowth.

Keywords Innovation, Communications, Economic growth, Sustainable development, Fuels,Politics and political science

Paper type Research paper

Several years ago, a California school of architecture asked me to evaluate studentmodels for a proposed municipal building. The students eagerly displayed theirgreen credentials. Some teams painstakingly topped their models with an elaborate

origami of solar cells. Others incorporated wind turbines, even though the building siteattracted only mild breezes. Notably, however, only one team oriented their building topassively absorb and reflect the sun’s rays, and none had thought to capitalize uponprevailing winds for airflow and cooling. Were the students’ high-tech solutions destined tohaplessly supplement otherwise power-hungry structures? Were green gizmos blindingthem to age-old architectural strategies for conserving energy? If so, these students werenot alone.

Years ago, two researchers led a group of study participants into a laboratory, gave themfree unlimited coffee and assigned them one simple task. They spread out an assortmentof magazines and requested that participants assemble them into collages that depicted

© Ozzie Zehner

The author would like to thankAaron T. Norton, John Grin,Loet Leydesdorff, ChunglinKwa, Jeffrey Weih, JohnPetrie, Luke Dodds, AnthonyLevenda, Josh Floyd, RichardSlaughter and the referees fortheir helpful commentsthrough various stages of thisresearch. Short sections of thispaper expand on preliminaryresearch published in adifferent form in GreenIllusions (Zehner, 2012).

DOI 10.1108/FS-11-2013-0062 VOL. 16 NO. 6 2014, pp. 567-585, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1463-6689 foresight PAGE 567

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what they thought of energy and its possible future. No cost-benefit analyses, nocalculations, no research. Just glue sticks and scissors. Their resulting collages weretelling – not for what they contained, but for what they didn’t (Leggett and Finlay, 2001).

The participants didn’t address energy waste by featuring efficient lighting or insulation.They didn’t choose to critique the factors driving energy use such as population growth,consumption or capitalism. Instead, they pasted together images of wind turbines, solarcells and electric cars. When they couldn’t find clippings, they asked to draw. Dams,wave-power systems, even animal power. They eagerly cobbled together fantastic totemsto a gleaming future of power production. Have we, as journalists, scholars, politicians andconcerned citizens, done the same?

Technological development allows humans to use energy and natural materials at a rate farhigher than the earth replenishes them (Huesemann and Huesemann, 2011; Rees, 2004).This creates an illusion of abundance, of which we are currently in the late stages,according to theorists of degrowth, peak oil and related matters (Murphy and Hall, 2011;Heinberg, 2010; Tverberg, 2012; Victor, 2008). Nevertheless, scientists and researchersthroughout many fields are generally in the business of finding ways to avoid technologicalfailure and build upon technological success. That is, the success of perpetuating theillusion of abundance. Whether that success is truly a virtuous undertaking has been anopen question for some time, and is of growing interest today given our precarious energyand economic predicaments (Tainter, 1988; Mander, 1991; Kingsnorth, 2013; White, 2009).

Throughout academia, government, industry and environmental organizations, alternativeenergy technologies stand as important components of a sustainable future. Scientistsbelieve that solar cells and wind turbines will offset some, or perhaps all, fossil fuel use, thatthey produce net energy apart from fossil fuels and that their cost is decoupled from thevolatility of conventional fuel (IPCC, 2007, 2011, 2014). As such, The IntergovernmentalPanel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007, 2011, 2014) and The International Energy Agency(IEA, 2013a), along with numerous scholars, business people and politicians, claim thatgreen tech will become more competitive, or even thrive, as regions shift away from fossilfuels due to choice or scarcity. But at least so far, this has not borne out in regionsexperiencing contraction. Spain’s solar industry, which grew to become a leader overrecent decades, estimates that 44,000 of the country’s 57,900 solar installations riskbankruptcy amidst a tightening of national economy (Nikiforuk, 2013). When Greece’seconomy collapsed and fossil fuels became less affordable, consumers did not demandsolar cells. Nor, in the midst of energy scarcity, could the government afford to erect windturbines, install wave power systems or shift the vehicle fleet over to electric cars. Instead,many Greeks did what other groups of energy-stressed humans have done precedingcivilizational collapse; they grabbed their axes, went into the forests and chopped downtheir trees. These are unsettling hints into why energy supplies, economy and energynarratives are reflexively interlinked and how clean energy expectations may not mesh withlived experience during complex transitions toward contraction or degrowth.

Questioning growth, technology and productivism

With a few exceptions, humans have historically considered growth to be good, leading tomore material wealth for more people – especially those clever enough to have been borninto the right family (Graetz, 2011). But is the story of growth only conceivable within anillusion of abundance? Overall, economic growth depletes natural materials, reducesbiodiversity and intensifies numerous other global risks. Population growth further multipliesthese risks while placing more souls in jeopardy of a potentially rocky contraction.

Couldn’t one argue that growth on a finite planet eventually leads to less for everyone? Lessenergy, less raw material, less ice cream? In these terms, wouldn’t a decreasing populationover time, and aggregate degrowth, leave a larger share of natural materials for everyone,as well as for other life? Where might such considerations lead our notions of equity?

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As long as the story of growth seems plausible to enough people, then growth will continue.For a time. But to the extent that growth continues, perhaps human civilization is extendinga gangplank out over a more abrupt decline, akin to Beck’s (1992) “risk society.”Technologists hinge our civilization’s future on the promise that creations such asalternative energy will rescue us from potential ecological crises and fossil fuel shortfalls.Does this focus obscure other options? Furthermore, what risks might this system of beliefcreate?

Modern energy systems deliver more than just utility; they symbolize modernity,excitement, wealth and power (Nye, 1990, 1999). Our language describes how people“recharge their batteries,” “get their wires crossed” or even experience “short circuits.” Oursymbolic preconceptions of energy shape what options we consider and those we cannotsee. Consider Dewey’s “occupational psychosis” (Burke, 1954) or the concepts of “trainedincapacity” (Burke, 1954) and “strategic ignorance” (McGoey, 2012), all related toMannheim’s (1936) “particular conception” of ideology. These generally hold that anindividual’s preconceptions can create blind spots, allowing past experience todetrimentally affect decision-making as conditions change. Yet more relevant to our energysociety, I suspect, is the extension of this phenomenon to include a class or an age – the“epoch” of a group that shares an encumbering worldview. Similar to what Mannheim callsa “total conception” of ideology, I intend to consider not just one energy technology, oreven the field of energy, but an entire network of belief. This conception presses us to thinkbeyond simple considerations of just scientific data, or just economics, or just new energytechnologies, or just environmental constraints or just any single part of the broadersystems of energy production and use (Hughes, 1987). Rather, we may consider therelationships between these various actors.

Moving ahead, I will take these perspectives as working guidelines. There is no divinestance to view these energy metaphors from above. No God-trick, as Haraway (1988)proclaims. But as media both reflect and shape public understanding of energy strategies,we can examine the many traces left behind in media “performances” of energyexpectations (Beder, 2004; Yanow, 1996). I begin by analyzing how media framed energysolutions during the 2003-2008 global energy shock. What assumptions did journalists useto frame potential solutions to this crisis? Why did media focus more on energy productionthan on energy reduction? I can offer only blurry snapshots, but they have the advantageof capturing an energy ethos, which is an inseparable blend of factors includingexpectations, symbolic meanings, behavior, scientific authority and psychological states.Finally, I consider the context of energy and economic contraction as a lens to exposesome unasked questions about alternative energy, which apply not just to the publicunderstanding of science but to the fields of research and policymaking more broadly.

This paper provisionally considers material evidence, but it is not intended to form ascientific argument of what the facts are, how the world is or what the future will be. Nor isthe product of this paper a list of specific policy recommendations, per se. Rather, bycontrasting the way popularized media frames energy options in a time of energy distressagainst some material observations of the presumed solutions, I intend to create a platformto view an unsettling discordance. My hope is that scholars, governments andorganizations might consider these different types of questions about energy during a timeof degrowth to perhaps make our analyses more useful, or at least more intriguing.

Snapshots of productivist media during an energy crisis

From 2003 to 2008 when petroleum prices tripled, media coverage of energy rose tostratospheric highs. LexisNexis, the media database that I studied for this research,accrued a corpus of roughly 50,000 articles on energy written over those years. For everydoubling of oil prices, I found that media coverage of solar, wind and biofuels shot up 300per cent. By contrast, media coverage of strategies associated with energy reduction –

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LED lighting, public transit and building insulation – remained comparatively low over thesame period, averaging just a 25 per cent increase (Figure 1).

Further, one in seven articles associated solar cells, wind turbines and biofuels with“energy independence.” We might expect journalists to similarly associate energyreduction strategies with energy independence; a BTU saved is a BTU that doesn’t have tobe imported. Yet, only a handful of articles – just 1 in 5,000 – made this association.

To explore these differences, I narrowed the corpus to mainstream articles publishedduring the initial three years of the energy shock that covered solar cells, understood as anenergy production technology, and light-emitting diode (LED) lighting, understood as anenergy reduction technology. This is a reasonable pairing because both are high-techdevices that were commercialized in the 1960s; exposed to oil shocks; and promoted formilitary, space and consumer applications. They co-exist but their developers compete forlimited funding and media attention. Whether these two technologies actually achieve theirpresumed purposes in the real world is a far more complex assessment due toconsiderations such as rebound effects (Herring et al., 2009). We will explore someintriguing discrepancies later. But to begin, we need only to keep in mind that peopleassociate LEDs with energy reduction and solar cells with energy production.

Through multiple close readings, I discovered three distinct differences between the wayjournalists wrote about these technologies. In addition to a description of my findings, I builtsemantic maps to roughly display these three prominent themes using concordance,statistical and visualization programs that use force-directed placement methods toarrange frequently used words into relational clusters[1]. The maps illustrate the mostcommon words associated with our selected technologies around three themes: technicaldescription, promises and potential to mitigate climate change. Node size corresponds toword frequency. The connecting lines indicate strength and proximity of relationshipsbetween words.

Figure 1 Media prioritized energy production strategies during energy shock

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Romancing the solar cell

If you are looking for romance, then you’d better produce energy rather than conserve it.Through iterative close readings, I found that journalists tended to wrap solar cells inromantic language and frame LEDs in impersonal technical terms. Journalists associatedLEDs with “geeks” or “geeky” activity. They commonly focused on physical qualities of thedevices using dry technical language. By contrast, none of the science writers associatedsolar cells with geeks. Instead, journalists told success stories of solar entrepreneursaccompanied by visual renderings of their projects. In addition to these qualitativedifferences, the semantic maps display how technical descriptions of LEDs (Figure 2) wereboth one-third larger and more interconnected than the technical discussions of solar cells(Figure 3).

Character-driven features typically center on people who are eager to present their greenindustry in a favorable light – usually business people, public figures or other sources thatviewers see as credible. Professor Sharon Beder claims that this “gives powerful peopleguaranteed access to the media no matter how flimsy their argument or howself-interested” (Beder, 2004, p. 210). In the effort to provide credibility, journalists mayunknowingly give equal voice to views that are blatantly exaggerated, have already beenwidely discredited or are given little credence by those more familiar with the topic.

Technical descriptions are more likely to uncover the grim realities of industrial production,while character-driven features obscure such unsavory details. For example, through myresearch, I have come across numerous reports that identify the raw material of solar cellssimply as “sand,” one of the most abundant materials on earth. In one instance, TheNational Renewable Energy Laboratory (2012) identifies solar silicon as “an element foundin sand.” However, solar manufacturers don’t use sand (and as far as I can tell frominterviewing people in the industry, never have). Although there are various methods,foundries typically begin the solar process by melting one part rare high-purity minedquartz with two parts coke from bituminous coal, a far less romantic prospect (Goodrichet al., 2013). Nobody writes about how solar cells typically arise from coal, perhaps

Figure 2 Journalists use mundane technical descriptions to describe energy reductiontechnologies

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because it is a material observation that does not fit generally accepted clean energynarratives. How might the public understanding of solar cells differ if journalists insteadwrote about the solar industry’s reliance on natural material extraction and fossil fuelsfor smelting and fabrication or how solar arrays require conventional power plants tostand along side them, or storage mechanisms such as batteries or pumping facilities,which all require further rounds of fossil fuel and material extraction? Suchconsiderations, as obvious as they may seem upon reflection, are conspicuouslyabsent from nearly all reporting on solar cells.

In one sense, these material characteristics of solar power could evoke anxiety aboutresource limitations and, in turn, modern living, of which green technologies are aconstitutive force (see Dwell Magazine, any issue). Might technological romanticism helpus avoid considering a potentially uncomfortable reckoning with resource depletion andeventual scarcity – a comfortable way of denying that growth in consumption andpopulation must eventually come to an end? Consider terror management theory, which inpart holds that when people are reminded of their eventual mortality, they tend to grasp onto preconceived worldviews and convenient symbols (Greenberg et al., 1986; Becker,1973). In a sense, it is precisely during times of energy distress, when we might expect tosee the most value in revering techno-optimistic symbols that promise to maintain familiarsystems of growth based on energy production. For instance, as statements about climatechange from the IPCC have become more urgent, so too have scientists’ patronage of solarcells and other productivist technologies, which, incidentally, they believe will preserveeconomic growth (IPCC, 2014).

Productivist narratives may also defend against challenges to our consumptive beliefsystems, allowing us, as energy users, to see our actions as just and desirable (Jost andHunyady, 2003). Cognitive dissonance theory holds just that. To the extent that behaviorand beliefs conflict, it is easier to adjust or defend one’s belief about a subject (e.g. solarcells replace coal use) than to modify a behavior (e.g. reducing consumption), particularlyif that behavior is associated with our impending mortality (Festinger, 1962; Jonas et al.,2003). Clean energy isn’t just a comforting story we tell ourselves. It’s a comforting storythat we tell ourselves about ourselves.

Figure 3 Journalists use roughly one-third less technical description when describingenergy production technologies

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Building productivist expectations

How else might energy users benefit from clean energy storylines? Governments frequentlycraft long-term predictions of energy use by extrapolating from past growth. Subsequently,firms evoke these predictions to prod investors to support fuel exploration, pipeline constructionand other productivist undertakings. Alternative energy companies have historically done thesame. Once firms build out new energy supply, energy becomes more affordable andavailable. Energy consumption increases and the original predictions come true. Numerousactors and factors hold the self-fulfilling prophecy together. Powerful energy lobbiespromote their productivist inclinations in the halls of government. A consumer-driven publicsops up any excess supply with a corresponding increase in demand. And as sideeffects are often hidden or displaced, the beneficiaries can continue at the expense ofothers who are less politically powerful, or who have not yet been born (NationalResearch Council, 2010).

Where does this leave expectations for energy reduction strategies? During the energyprice shock in 2003, LED bulb efficiencies were rapidly increasing and installed costs weredropping. In contrast, solar cell installed costs and efficiencies were comparatively flat(Zehner, 2012a). We might expect journalists to have been excited about the trends inLEDs in comparison to solar cells but they weren’t. Mainstream media outlets framed LEDsin terms of present practicalities, reviewing their use in flashlights, automobile headlampsand other mundane devices already in production. Journalists often cited past growth inLED efficiency, but few projected those gains into the future or outlined possible scenariosfor the technology. On the other hand, journalists eagerly imagined possible futures forsolar technologies, using anticipatory language that framed the solar industry’s promisesas reasonable starting points for investment and attention. This excitement echoes a 1949Scientific American article, which reviews industry expectations that solar cells will become“economically significant within a decade,” and help double US energy supply (ScientificAmerican, 1949). In 1956, the magazine estimated that “houses heated and cooled by solarenergy can be expected in the next few years” (Tabor, 1956, p. 97). Following the Arab oilembargo, a 1976 feature article began with disbelief “that Americans should be concernedabout their supply of energy” because the new fabrication techniques were making solarcells “economically competitive” (Chalmers, 1976, p. 34). For quite some time, alternativeenergy technologies have had a bright future.

Promising language appeared twice as often in journalistic coverage of solar cellscompared to that of LEDs (Figures 4 and 5). Early-stage technology fields, where no

Figure 4 Journalists use limited promising language when describing energy reductionfutures

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physical products exist, often run principally on promises. Stories about thesetechnologies, rather than the technologies themselves, can organize investment anddevelopment (Robinson, 2014). As we have seen, journalists and scientists frequentlyfocus on the claim that prices of solar technical components have been declining. Theyrarely identify that most of the cost of an installed solar system goes toward low-techexpenditures for labor, insurance and maintenance, as well as materials such as concrete,copper and aluminum, which remain stubbornly expensive and will presumably remainpricey into the future because they rely on vast quantities of dense fossil fuel for theirmanufacture. To what extent does the focus on “technical innovation” obscure more rigidlow-tech limits? Secondly, the USA, China, Germany and other countries heavily subsidizesolar cells. In 2011, solar cells received at least $25 billion in subsidies, meaning subsidiesalone equated to about 20 times the wholesale rate of conventional electricity per resultingMWh (IEA, 2012). The hope is that subsidies will amortize over 20-30 years of productionbut even then they remain substantial. And, due to interest, such financing presumablyrelies on overall economic growth and in turn growth in natural material extraction, mostnotably, fossil fuels, which yield a high energy return on energy invested (EROI) (Murphyand Hall, 2011; Palmer, 2014). As subsidies clearly make solar costs, and subsequentlyenergy inputs, appear far lower than they actually are, why do researchers and mediatypically leave them out of their cost reporting? In a related and notably rare critique, theNew York Times reported in 2003 that defective panels are plaguing the solar industry,offsetting up-front savings with higher replacement costs (Woody, 2013). An industry studyof 785 panels at two large solar installations in Spain reported a 16.2 per cent defect rateafter two years (Coello, 2011). A study of 30,000 panels in Europe found that 80 per centwere underperforming (Woody, 2013). Why do researchers and reporters generally presentdata reported by the solar industry rather than these types of field measurements?

Most importantly, however, journalists rarely consider how the quality of energy from solarcells differs from that of fossil fuels, which is dense, storable, portable, fungible andtransformable. I have written about these qualities elsewhere in great detail but will reviewthem briefly here (Zehner 2012a, 2013). For instance, solar and wind energy is diffuse, so

Figure 5 Journalists use roughly twice the promising language to describe energyproduction futures

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the systems to capture it must be large and therefore material-intensive. Solar and windoutput is not storable without dedicating yet another round of fossil fuels to build so-called“smart grids” with redundant supply or energy storage systems such as batteries. Theresulting stored energy is still not easily portable. For instance, the 435-pound,5.5-foot.-long Chevy Volt battery, when fully charged, carries the energy equivalent of justa single gallon of gasoline weighing six pounds. Unlike fossil fuels, solar and wind systemsand their byproducts are not transformable into fertilizers, pharmaceuticals and otherproducts necessary to support labor. Journalists overwhelmingly fail to consider whethersolar and wind systems produce the quality of energy necessary to manufacture them andthe systems that support them. They also overlook that energy firms do not, and cannot, usesolar and wind energy to create solar cells and wind turbines.

Instead, they tend to indulge in rich descriptions and associations that might seem entirelyimplausible were they to occur outside the protective halo of green energy symbolism. Takefor instance a New York Times article, which states, “A link between Moore’s Law and solartechnology reflects the engineering reality that computer chips and solar cells have a lot incommon” (Zachary, 2008). This symbolic link between solar cells and Moore’s Law iswidespread. Former US Vice President and energy industrialist Al Gore seems tounderstand that the association is not quite right, but makes it anyway. “The costdown-curve is not quite as steep as Moore’s Law but it’s real steep,” Gore (2013) said in aninterview, “that’s the part of the computer chip revolution that was so cool – that’shappening with photovoltaic energy and wind energy now.” Numerous media industriouslyevoke Moore’s Law association. But, we would have a difficult time finding a singlephysicist to agree. Have solar technologies followed Moore’s Law in terms of cost orperformance? No and no, according to cost reporting from the industry itself, shown inFigure 6. Solar proponents don’t offer data, statistics, figures or any other explanationbeyond the Moore’s Law comparison itself – a semiotic hit and run. To what degree and inwhat ways do researchers succumb to unacknowledged emotional, cultural, financial ortechnophilic bias in crafting their alternative energy questions?

Productivism becomes a climate change solution

The third and most striking of these media representations is the association of solar cellsand LEDs with climate change. During the energy shock, journalists presented solar cells

Figure 6 Moore’s Law and technology costs as reported by industry (Intel, NREL andSolarbuzz)

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as a “clean” alternative that could reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They featuredcompanies using solar cells as part of their socially responsible planning to show that thetechnology is entering mainstream use. In reporting on LEDs, journalists discussed deviceefficiency but less frequently linked those energy savings to climate change orgreenhouse-gas reductions. They rarely associated LEDs with pollution reduction frompower plants. Also notably absent were colorful stories about companies using LEDs toreduce their ecological footprint (Figures 7 and 8).

In effect, readers learn that the priority path to mitigating carbon is not through reducingconsumption but through increasing production, using alternative means. We mightassume that this is more or less acceptable so long as solar cells at minimum offset fossilfuel use and produce more net energy than is required for their construction anddeployment. Media as well as the vast majority of governmental and academic researchersassume that they do both. However, there is an emerging problem with these assumptions– there’s scant material or theoretical evidence to support them. I have argued elsewherethat solar cells appear to be subject to a price-tag predicament (Zehner 2013a, 2013b). Inshort, where do the high costs of solar cells accrue, if not ultimately to fossil fuels via profit,materials and labor? Like other industrial commodities, solar cells rely on dense fossil fuelsfor manufacturing, financing and labor (workers in turn use fossil fuels for constructingshelter, transportation, fertilizer for food and so forth). Do the high costs of installed solarsystems merely indicate fossil fuel consumption through alternate means?

Figure 7 Journalists rarely frame energy reduction as a solution to climate change

Figure 8 Journalists frequently frame energy production as a solution to climatechange

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Relatedly, York (2012) reviews 50 years of energy data, finding that solar and wind powerhave not offset a single fossil fuel plant. He concludes: “The common assumption that theexpansion of production of alternative energy will suppress fossil-fuel energy production inequal proportion is clearly wrong” (York, 2012, p. 443). Perhaps part of this is due to thequality issues reviewed earlier, but we might also consider the history of hydropower in theUSA. In 1950, dams filled roughly a third of US electrical demand. Subsidized hydropowerhelped keep electricity costs low and demand subsequently increased across the board.Utilities filled that demand by building more fossil fuel power plants, not fewer. Dams havemultiplied since 1950, but hydropower now fills just 7 per cent of the nation’s electricity grid.

This is an energy boomerang effect, which could conceivably occur in any growth economyto varying degrees (Zehner, 2012b, 2013c). Subsidized energy induces a downwardpressure on energy costs. Demand relatively expands, bringing the economy right back towhere it started, with constrained supply coupled with sustained demand. That demandcould manifest in electrical demand or through demand for products, services and imports.The harder we throw new power into the grid, the harder we risk demand coming back tohit us on the head. In a growth economy, are larger solar arrays and taller wind turbines justways of throwing the boomerang harder?

The productivist ethos

These media representations of solar cells (as romantic, promising, zero carbon andleading to energy independence) follow a historical valorization of alternative energyproduction as a solution, in whole or part, to the resource, climate and energy challengesthat humanity faces. The politics of production are far more palatable than the politics ofrestraint, as US President Jimmy Carter learned in the 1970s. After asking Americans to turndown their thermostats and put on sweaters, Carter received a boost in the polls. But votersultimately turned to label him a pedantic president of limits. “No one has yet won an electionin the USA by lecturing Americans about limits, even if common sense suggests suchhomilies may be overdue,” remarks historian Schama (2009, pp. 307-308). “Each time theUSA has experienced an unaccustomed sense of claustrophobia, new versions of frontierreinvigoration have been sold to the electors as national tonic” (p. 308).

Clean energy is the tonic of choice for the discerning environmentalist. Over recentdecades, flows of power within America and other parts of the world began pooling aroundalternative energy technologies. In the 1980s, the Brundtland Commission brought the ideaof sustainable development into the spotlight. The Commission sidestepped societalprograms to instead underline technology as the central focus of sustainable developmentpolicy (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987, p. 217). Soon after, theUnited Nations developed a sustainable development action plan called Agenda 21, whichcharged technological development with alleviating harmful impacts of growth. As the newcenterpiece of social policy, there was little debate around technology, other than how toimplement it. This faith in the ability of technologies to deliver sustainable forms ofdevelopment evolved during a period of public euphoria surrounding informationtechnology, agricultural efficiency through petrochemicals, management technology andgenetic engineering.

Mainstream environmental organizations were eager to fill the pews of this newly energizedchurch of technological sustainability, which they themselves had helped to consecrate. A1991 World Resources Institute publication stated, “Technological change has contributedmost to the expansion of wealth and productivity. Properly channeled, it could hold the keyto environmental sustainability as well” (Heaton et al., 1991, p. 7). During the 1980s and1990s, environmental organizations began to disengage from concerns about the earth’slimits to growth, opting instead for what they called “sustainable development.” Their formerenthusiasm for stringent government regulation waned as they expanded roles for“corporate responsibility,” “voluntary restrictions,” “triple-bottom-line accounting” and“closed-loop production systems,” which purported to be good for the environment and

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good for profits. In 2002, the United Nations narrowed its assessments by stating thattechnological sustainability would require “little if any political and cultural negotiationabout modern lifestyles, or about the global systems of production, information, and financeon which they rest” (United Nations, 1996). And by 2004, Australia Research Council FellowDavison (2004, p. 136) observed that “the instrumentalist representation of technologies asunquestioned loyal servants” had come to fully dominate sustainable development policy.

Limits-to-growth theories have encountered limits of their own as effective conceptual toolsfor change. Yet I argue we should consider whether the mass exodus away from theseguiding concepts and toward passionate narratives of technological solutionism might behindering other ways of seeing the human predicament.

How productivism infiltrates media

When faced with readers who were anxious about fossil fuel security during the oil priceshock, public science writers focused overwhelmingly on energy production strategies.They covered these productivist solutions with character-driven narratives. They analyzedthese technologies in terms of future expectations rather than present states. And, theyframed energy production as a solution to the anxieties at hand: energy independence andclimate change.

I have attempted to problematize media representations of solar cells as a promising “zerocarbon” energy source that will “inexpensively” lead to “energy independence” through“future” technological advancements. We’ve witnessed discordance between mediarenderings of alternative energy and material observations on the ground. But this is notentirely surprising. Media representations of alternative energy are not methodical surveysand analyses of data and thermodynamic laws. They are the product of a much differenttype of process.

Objectivity in journalism is frequently, yet mistakenly, understood as truth. Facts are elusive,and news organizations understand that attempting to sell them directly would be sheerfolly. Journalistic objectivity is not so much a rendering of truth as much as it is an attemptto accurately convey what others believe to be true. To achieve this rendering, experiencedjournalists instruct novice journalists to keep their own beliefs and evaluations tothemselves through a conscious depersonalization. Second, mentors instruct them to aimfor balance, or field “both sides” of a controversial subject without showing favor to one sideor the other (Mindich, 1998). The news industry generally accepts this framework as thebest way to go about reporting on issues and events. Nevertheless, this truth-makingstrategy carries certain peculiarities.

For example, news editors tend to judge stories supporting the status quo as more neutralthan stories challenging it, which they understand as containing bias or beingopinion-laden. Investigations that present empirical evidence and consider unfamiliaralternatives are not as valued as the familiar “balance of opinions.” As a result, journalistsreduce energy debates to a contest between alternative energy technologies andconventional fossil fuels. Pitting one method of energy production against anothereffectively sidelines energy reduction options, as if productivist methods are the onlychoices available. These journalistic dichotomies also reduce apparent options to anemaciated choice between Technology A and Technology B. This leaves little space fornontechnical alternatives. It also misses negative effects that both Technologies A and Bshare in common. Finally, pitting alternative energy technologies against fossil fuelreinforces the impression that increasing alternative energy flows will correspondinglydecrease fossil fuel consumption.

Eight in ten journalists claim news rooms dedicate insufficient attention to complex issuessuch as global energy production, use and related side effects (Kohut et al., 2008).Understaffed news rooms increasingly initiate stories using material distributed by publicrelations firms and corporations – rather than investigative work (Kohut et al., 2008). Energy

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firms frequently provide journalists with videos, photographs and computer renderingsalong with enticing hooks. The drive for entertainment leaves little space to coverbackground, contextual fundamentals or the structural origins of increasing energyconsumption. These factors help explain the abundance of articles touting new greengadgets, which are simply rewritten press releases from companies or researcherspromoting their products and eager to attract attention (and funding) for their oftenhalf-baked schemes.

Some media outlets will directly reprint special interest group “content” under their ownmasthead. The Detroit Free Press has directly published materials prepared by a brandingfirm called “Issue Media Group,” which is dedicated to “creating new narratives” thatpromote growth and investment (Issue Media Group, 2014). Alternet, Salon.com andTruthout have published material written by “Global Possibilities,” a special interest groupfunded in part by the oil company BP and a group of automotive and energy industrialistsrepresented through The Energy Foundation (Global Possibilities, 2013). The specialinterest group “Inside Climate News,” funded in part through The Energy Foundation, theRockefellers and other productivist interests, claims to publish through numerous mediabrands including the Associated Press, Bloomberg, Business Week, The Weather Channel,The Guardian and the McClatchy Group, a conglomerate of 30 daily newspapers acrossthe USA (Inside Climate News, 2014). Special interest groups commission their articlesfrom within a sphere of private, typically business, interest. Readers and viewers have adifficult time distinguishing between such sponsored content and traditional independentjournalism Figure 9.

Conclusion: crisis of the productivist ethos during contraction

Set against the backdrop of a clear blue sky, alternative energy technologies shimmer withhope for a cleaner, better future. Alternative energy technologies appear to be generatinga small, yet enticing, impact on our energy system, making it easier for us to envisionsolar-powered transporters flying around gleaming spires of the future metropolis.Understandably, we like that. These visions are certainly more pleasant than imaginingfood shortages, land decimation, economic disintegration and conflict, which we might

Figure 9 Rebranding productivism in mainstream media via philanthropy and fundedgroups

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otherwise associate with fossil fuel scarcity. The immediate problem, it seems, is not that wewill run out of fossil fuel sources any time soon, but that the places we tap for theseresources – tar sands, deep sea beds and wildlife preserves – will constitute a much dirtier,more risky and far more expensive portfolio of fossil fuel choices in the future. Certainlyalternative energy technologies seem an alluring solution to this challenge. And while thisis a pristine and alluring vision, might it also be a deadly distraction?

As we live on a finite planet, the system of ever-increasing expectations, translated intoever-increasing demand and resulting in again increased expectations, will someday cometo an end. Whether that end is due to an intervention in the cycle that humanity plans andexecutes or a more unpredictable and perhaps cataclysmic end that comes unexpectedlyin the night is a decision that may ultimately be made by the generations of people alivetoday. How might a better understanding of this predicament change the types ofquestions various groups ask about energy?

While alternative energy technologies may mean different things to different people, theheartiness of these notions manages to sustain a common identity across variousdisciplines. In these ways, solar cells and other energy technologies act as “boundaryobjects,” described by Star and Griesemer (1989, p. 393) as concepts “both plasticenough to adapt to local needs and the constraints of the several parties employing them,yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites.” These objects of affection“have different meanings in different social worlds but their structure is common enough tomore than one world to make them recognizable, a means of translation” (p. 393). Beyondtheir manifest purpose of producing electrical power, various groups use these symbolictechnologies for their own purposes.

For industry, green tech offers tax breaks, production opportunities and good publicrelations opportunities. And indeed, solar photovoltaic circuitry, electric car designs andother productivist devices are patentable and commodifiable in a way that passive solardesign and walkable neighborhoods are not. For academic and institutional researchers,alternative energy can attract recognition and grant money. Elected leaders stand to excitetheir constituencies with visions of a cleaner future. Belief in alternative energy enablesconcerned citizens to feel responsible and successful in combating environmentalchallenges.

The lens of economic contraction slices open some alternative energy assumptions,scarcely explored in public science and academic literature, for closer examination. Tobegin, do solar cells and wind turbines offset fossil fuel use? Do they produce net energy?As I stated previously, I do not intend to answer these questions here. Rather I intend toexplore why you, I and other researchers might do well to ask them. It is tempting to citestudies on carbon accounting, EROI, EROEI, life cycle analyses and the like. However,such studies generally valorize easily quantifiable factors while ignoring unquantifiablequalities such as energy density, storability, portability, fungibility and transformability, aswell as factors such as risks, tradeoffs and labor requirements. These and many otherconsiderations do matter, even though they do not fit neatly into the confines of aquantitative study (Zehner, 2013a). I have no solution to this conundrum (and I doubt thereis one). But relying on this literature to make sense of the world is like trusting a food criticwho judges meals using nothing but a ruler.

If solar cells do offset fossil fuels and create net energy, then regions facing economichardship would clearly embrace them, as solar cells would be cheaper than the fossil fuelsused for their construction and use. Modern solar and wind industries should thrive in sucha context, but they have not. Why? Solar advocates complain about a lack of political will.But what does “political will” mean during an economic crisis when money and energyinputs are scarce? An alternate explanation might simply be that the price tag is too high.The high up-front cost of alternative energy technologies requires financing. And, financingcurrently relies on investor confidence and economic growth. Will the economic constraints

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on solar deployment supersede material or technical limits (Weißbach et al., 2013)? Solarcells rely on an economy of finance and investment that faces instability without growth. Inthis way, expensive green technologies rely on the froth generated within a growtheconomy that is itself driven by fossil fuel.

Can solar cell industries operate in a contractionary economy? The experiences duringeconomic contraction in Greece and Spain, limited as they are, do not auger well (Prietoand Hall, 2013). Considering these technologies within a context of economic decline startsto shed light on why alternative energy expectations in Spain, Greece and elsewhereunraveled and why the tightly wound conceptions of alternative energy are loosening inother countries where they have been most enthusiastically embraced, most notablyGermany where “political will” hit turbulence and solar initiatives were mocked bymainstream media (Boisvert, 2013; Premalatha et al., 2013; Palmer, 2014; Welke, 2014).

We have no recent model of long-term global economic contraction. But as progrowthideals are well-funded, politically powerful, connected with media and pervasive in publicthought, it’s no surprise that most of us have come to accept many progrowth premises asself-evident truth (Dietz et al., 2012). We expect companies to increase their earnings, laborto expand and material wealth to increase throughout the world until every last child is fed,clothed, educated and prosperous. This storyline is conceivable only if we are willing tobelieve that there are enough resources on the planet for many more inhabitants of thefuture to consume, eat, play and work at the standards that wealthy citizens enjoy today.

“The picture is as clear as it is disturbing,” writes International Energy Agency DirectorMaria van der Hoeven, “the carbon intensity of the global energy supply has barelychanged in 20 years, despite successful efforts in deploying renewable energy” (IEA,2013b, p. 5). Nations spent $2 trillion on alternative energy between 1990 and 2012, yet thepower sector’s carbon output increased 44 per cent (IEA, 2013b). We can’t say how carbondioxide levels would have changed without that expenditure. But what might happen ifnations spend another $2 trillion or perhaps $10 trillion on solar cells and wind turbines overthe coming years? Is it even possible to spend that money without increasing naturalmaterial extraction (Vidal et al., 2013) and subsequently fossil fuel use? Alternative energyfirms might say this expenditure is necessary to offset fossil fuel use into the future. But isthis assumed offset demonstrable (York, 2012)? We have witnessed a boomerang effect,whereby energy production funding expands energy supplies and ultimately leads togreater consumption (Zehner, 2012a, 2013c). Within a growth economy, even energyefficiency efforts open opportunities to expand overall energy production through variousrebound effects (Herring et al., 2009). What plausible theoretical stance could explain howincreasing energy production in a growth economy would lead to lower material extraction?

We could expend our precious remaining fossil fuels to prepare for the coming contraction.But how? We know that both energy production and energy reduction “solutions” have theperverse potential to further economic growth and natural material extraction, hoistingcivilization toward an even steeper cliff. During a time of contraction, might the perceivedvalue of low-tech energy reduction strategies, such as insulation, increase? Meanwhile,what will become of pricey high-tech energy production schemes if they are indeed merelyby-products of fossil fuels and the growth economy?

Debord (1970, p. 14) wrote that “the society which rests on modern industry is notaccidentally or superficially spectacular, it is fundamentally spectaclist.” Perhaps he couldhave spoken similarly about modern energy or modern environmentalism. Debord’sspectacle is a divine deity around which duty-bound citizens gravitate to chant objectiveswithout reflecting upon fundamental goals. It’s all too easy for us to miss the limitations ofalternative energy, Debord might say, as we drop to our knees at the foot of the cleanenergy spectacle, gasping in rapture. This oracle delivers a ready-made creed of idealsand objectives that are convenient to recite and that bear the authority of science. Thesehandy notions of clean energy reflexively work into environmental discourse. And as we

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have seen here, productivist environmentalists enroll media to tattoo wind, solar andbiofuels into the subcutaneous flesh of the environmental movement. In fact, these noveltiescome to define what it means to be an environmentalist. And environmentalist’s aren’t theonly ones lining up for ink.

Every news article, congressional committee hearing, textbook entry and bumper stickercreates an occasion for the visibility of solar cells, wind power and other productivisttechnologies. Numerous actors draw upon these moments of visibility to articulate pathsthese technologies ought to follow. First, diverse groups draw upon flexible clean-energydefinitions to attract support. Then they roughly sculpt energy options into more appealingpromises – not through experimentation, but by planning, rehearsing and staging mediademonstrations. Next, lobbyists, foundations and PR teams transfer the promises intocompelling stories, legislative frameworks and eventually necessities for engineers topursue. What happens to our analyses of “innovation” if we frame “innovators” as skilled, orperhaps unwitting, “conjurers” of an illusion of abundance?

A consequence of alternative energy visibility-making appears to be the necessaryinvisibility of other options. There’s only so much room on the stage. Energy reductionstrategies, degrowth, economic contraction and other decline pathways remind people oftheir reliance on finite resources, or their own vulnerability to the imminent contraction. Inominous times, might individuals invest their enthusiasm into alternative energy narratives,thereby allowing themselves to cognitively avoid existential threats and circumventotherwise undesirable reckonings?

Perhaps we have forged magnificent energy spectacles only to cast ourselves as climaticsuperheroes within the late stages of an illusion of abundance. If so, then these spectacleshave come to protect us from questions about our own culpability in ecosystem decline.Green technologies bypass worries of raw material scarcity, as they exist in our minds apartfrom fossil fuel and extractive industry. They ease our anxieties about increasing levels ofCO2 so long as we faithfully believe that they are carbon-free undertakings. But mostcentrally, alternative energy spectacles protect us from considering our own growth, inconsumption and population, which could not otherwise come to a peaceful end within thelogic of the current expansionist milieu.

Note

1. I used TextSTAT to built a word frequency list from the articles. By filtering to the most commonwords in each set of articles, the difference in size of the two databases became roughlynormalized. Of the 10,417 words used in the solar cell articles, 293 were used more than six times.Of the 7,026 words used in the LED articles, 313 were used more than four times. The ratio of totalwords between the two databases (7,026/10,417 � 0.674) is roughly the same as the frequencyratio (4/6 � 0.667). I used this normalization technique for three topical word lists, using the programfulltext.exe from Loet Leydesdorff at the University of Amsterdam to create a cosine-normalizedword matrix for each set of articles (www.leydesdorff.net/software/fulltext/index.htm). I imported thismatrix into the visualization tool Pajek which allowed for further reduction by displaying only themost central words and links in the network and scaling the data set, improving the visualization ofthe matrices (http://pajek.imfm.si/doku.php). I formatted the maps using a Kamada–Kawai freeassociation, a force-directed placement method for undirected graphs, which arranges formlessdistributions of points into relational clusters.

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Zehner, O. (2013b), “Expensive green technologies aren’t as clean as they seem”, IEEE Spectrum, 30July.

Zehner, O. (2013c), “Determination on extension of the wind energy production tax credit”, Committeeon Ways and Means, United States House of Representatives.

Further reading

Bakker, S. and van Lente, H. (2010), “Competing expectations: the case of hydrogen storagetechnologies”, Technology Analysis and Strategic Management, Vol. 22 No. 6, pp. 693-709.

Leydesdorff, L. and Hellsten, I. (2006), “Measuring the meaning of words in contexts: an automatedanalysis of controversies about ‘monarch butterflies, ‘Frankenfoods,’ and ‘stem cells”, Scientometrics,Vol. 67 No. 2, pp. 231-258.

Murphy, D.J. and Hall, C.A. (2011), “Energy return on investment, peak oil, and the end of economicgrowth”, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 1219 No. 1, pp. 52-72.

Van Lente, H. and Rip, A. (1998), “Expectations in technological developments: an example ofprospective structures to be filled by agency”, in Disco, C. and Vandermeulen, B. (Eds), GettingTechnologies Together: Studies in Making Sociotechnical Order, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin.

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