Socio-technical change: Developing narratives for the Danish energy and transport sector

The choices of more sustainable technologies for citizens, are highly dependent on political processes (Kern 2015). To secure impact on actual policy making, stakeholder participation from for instance researchers, policy makers and citizen, is crucial (Volkery and Ribeiro 2009). Although Denmark has the past years done much to increase the amount in of renewable energy in the energy system, the transport sector has not yet been included in the greening process (Sovacool 2013). The transport sector is responsible for almost a quarter of greenhouse emissions in EU, whereof two thirds originate from road transports (EU, 2014). Thus it is important to focus on political actors and processes within socio-technical transitions on this area.
The paper is based on the COMETS project, which main focus is policy advice in the Danish energy and transport sector to achieve a fossil-fuel free energy system in 2050. The data consists of workshops where scientists and stakeholders propose a set of narrative scenarios; a range of interviews; a citizen meeting, where a representative group of the public evaluates the proposed narratives; a future panel in the parliament where the energy groups evaluates scenarios.
Different actors can be enrolled into a coalition of change through narratives which include and organise visions and expectations (Smith, Stirling, and Berkhout 2005). Central to this study is the question of how different actors in the Danish energy and transport sector envision possible futures through a scenario planning process. This study investigates the disputes between actors and their conflicting interests in the political arena dedicated to the reproduction of the current regime with an actor-network approach.
In this study we conclude on how different actor groups create and evaluate future scenarios emphasizing the conflicts within the arena among the actor groups.