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Industrial decarbonization and the net-zero climate strategy has arisen as one of the most important policy challenges of the modern era. But how do industrial decarbonization policy efforts link with other issues? The UK claims to be the first major economy in the world to posit a net-zero target. In this paper, drawn from an original qualitative dataset involving expert interviews (N  = 46), site visits (N  = 20), and a review of the literature, we explore ongoing policy windows and efforts to decarbonize both the Humber and Merseyside. These regions have aggressive implementation plans in place for the deployment of net-zero infrastructure, with Zero Carbon Humber and HyNet seeking billions of dollars of investment to build green and blue hydrogen facilities coupled with carbon storage networks. These two clusters are leading national net-zero ambitions, with actual, enforceable timetables to achieve decarbonization. Investigating the unfolding efforts being undertaken by these two regions to decarbonize industry offers insight into the "green gold rush" and nascent business opportunities in the so-called carbon economy, including large-scale investment of capital into the policies nominally designed to tackle climate change. Through the identification of 24 different issues linked to decarbonization, the paper also offers more conceptual depth into the interplay between policy windows and issue linkage, which coevolve and shape each other as net-zero ambitions solidify. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many actors have recently launched significant new initiatives in the domain of climate change and health. Given this important nexus, we undertook a review of funding patterns from 1985 – 2022, using the NIH RePORTER database for the United States and the Dimensions database globally. This includes an assessment of more than 9 million publicly funded projects across both databases with a collective budget of more than $3 trillion. We estimate that between 1985 and 2022 only 0.26% of research funding awarded by the NIH related to climate change, and only 0.70% of funded projects in the Dimensions database related to climate change and human health. Moreover, we thematically map funding patterns according to four thematic areas: changes in climate, the effects of climate change, health impacts, and interventions and strategies. More funding is needed to better anticipate and prepare for the projected health impacts of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solar geoengineering (also known as solar radiation modification) is garnering more attention (and controversy) among media and policymakers in response to the impacts of climate change. Such debates have become more prominent following the first-ever field trials of stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) in 2022. How the lay public perceives solar geoengineering remains unclear, however. We use nationally representative samples (N = 3013) in Mexico, United States, and United Kingdom to examine public perceptions of risks and benefits, support, and policy preferences. We also employ an information-framing design that presented individuals with media-style reports on SAI activities differing along three dimensions: location, actor, and scale and purpose. Support for SAI is found to be generally higher in Mexico; perceptions of risks and benefits do not differ between countries. Information about SAI activities has a limited effect. There is evidence that activities conducted by universities receive more support than those by start-up companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need for public engagement is increasingly evident as discussions intensify around emerging methods for carbon dioxide removal and controversial proposals around solar geoengineering. Based on 44 focus groups in 22 countries across the Global North and Global South (N = 323 participants), this article traces public preferences for a variety of bottom-up and top-down engagement practices ranging from information recipient to broad decision authority. Here, we show that engagement practices need to be responsive to local political cultures and socio-technical environments, while attending to the global dimensions and interconnectedness of the issues at stake. Establishing public engagement as a cornerstone of inclusive and sustainable governance of climate-intervention technologies requires (i) recognizing the diversity of forms and intensities of engaging, (ii) considering national contexts and modes of engagement, (iii) tailoring to technological idiosyncrasies, (iv) adopting power-sensitive practices, (v) accounting for publics' prior experience, (vi) establishing trust and procedural legitimacy and (vii) engaging with tensions and value disagreements. Meaningful public engagement is key to sustainable governance of carbon removal and solar radiation modification. A study across 22 countries emphasizes tailored approaches sensitive to local contexts, technological nuances, power dynamics and trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Institutional theory, behavioral science, sociology and even political science all emphasize the importance of actors in achieving social change. Despite this salience, the actors involved in researching, promoting, or deploying negative emissions and solar geoengineering technologies remain underexplored within the literature. In this study, based on a rigorous sample of semi-structured expert interviews (N = 125), we empirically explore the types of actors and groups associated with both negative emissions and solar geoengineering research and deployment. We investigate emergent knowledge networks and patterns of involvement across space and scale. We examine actors in terms of their support of, opposition to, or ambiguity regarding both types of climate interventions. We reveal incipient and perhaps unforeseen collections of actors; determine which sorts of actors are associated with different technology pathways to comprehend the locations of actor groups and potential patterns of elitism; and assess relative degrees of social acceptance, legitimacy, and governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper challenges the language of "interdisciplinarity," suggesting "pluralistic collaboration" as a better alternative. Interdisciplinarity, team science, and transdisciplinarity frame academic and problem-focused collaborations narrowly, overemphasizing epistemology, downplaying extra-disciplinary divides and nonacademic collaborators, and either ignoring or psychologizing individual-level phenomena. We first paint a picture of the tensions and divides that exist in pluralistic collaborations, in three dimensions—epistemic, cultural, and normative—using a series of literature reviews to simultaneously map and extend these dimensions. We then introduce and explore a fourth dimension—academic work styles. Individual level considerations of collaboration in the literature generally rely on psychological types. We explore what a more sociologically oriented approach to individual dynamics within collaborations would look like by identifying and exploring four general academic work styles: isolationist, imperialist, pragmatist, and pluralist. We conclude by emphasizing and reflecting on pluralistic collaboration. Pluralism exists along a range of dimensions, and pluralizing or homogenizing different dimensions (pluralizing pluralism) can produce diverse effects on the outcome of interdisciplinary collaboration. While we thus advocate for pluralism along a greater range of dimensions when addressing complex problems, we suggest that over-pluralization can be a problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ongoing global race for bigger and better artificial intelligence (AI) systems is expected to have a profound societal and environmental impact by altering job markets, disrupting business models, and enabling new governance and societal welfare structures that can affect global consensus for climate action pathways. However, the current AI systems are trained on biased datasets that could destabilize political agencies impacting climate change mitigation and adaptation decisions and compromise social stability, potentially leading to societal tipping events. Thus, the appropriate design of a less biased AI system that reflects both direct and indirect effects on societies and planetary challenges is a question of paramount importance. In this paper, we tackle the question of data-centric knowledge generation for climate action in ways that minimize biased AI. We argue for the need to co-align a less biased AI with an epistemic web on planetary health challenges for more trustworthy decision-making. A human-in-the-loop AI can be designed to align with three goals. First, it can contribute to a planetary epistemic web that supports climate action. Second, it can directly enable mitigation and adaptation interventions through knowledge of social tipping elements. Finally, it can reduce the data injustices associated with AI pretraining datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deliberations are underway to utilize increasingly radical technological options to help address climate change and stabilize the climatic system. Collectively, these options are often referred to as "climate geoengineering." Deployment of such options, however, can create wicked tradeoffs in governance and require adaptive forms of risk management. In this study, we utilize a large and novel set of qualitative expert interview data to more deeply and systematically explore the types of risk–risk tradeoffs that may emerge from the use of 20 different climate geoengineering options, 10 that focus on carbon dioxide or greenhouse gas removal, and 10 that focus on solar radiation management and reflecting sunlight. We specifically consider: What risks does the deployment of these options entail? What types of tradeoffs may emerge through their deployment? We apply a framework that clusters risk–risk tradeoffs into institutional and governance, technological and environmental, and behavioral and temporal dimensions. In doing so, we offer a more complete inventory of risk–risk tradeoffs than those currently available within the respective risk‐assessment, energy‐systems, and climate‐change literatures, and we also point the way toward future research gaps concerning policy, deployment, and risk management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negative emissions technologies and solar radiation management techniques could contribute towards climate stability, either by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it permanently or reflecting sunlight away from the atmosphere. Despite concerns about them, such options are increasingly being discussed as crucial complements to traditional climate change mitigation and adaptation. Expectations around negative emissions and solar radiation management and their associated risks and costs shape public and private discussions of how society deals with the climate crisis. In this study, we rely on a large expert survey (N = 74) to critically examine the future potential of both negative emission options (e.g., carbon dioxide removal) and solar radiation management techniques. We designed a survey process that asked a pool of prominent experts questions about (i) the necessity of adopting negative emissions or solar radiation management options, (ii) the desirability of such options when ranked against each other, (iii) estimations of future efficacy in terms of temperature reductions achieved or gigatons of carbon removed, (iv) expectations about future scaling, commercialization, and deployment targets, and (v) potential risks and barriers. Unlike other elicitation processes where experts are more positive or have high expectations about novel options, our results are more critical and cautionary. We find that some options (notably afforestation and reforestation, ecosystem restoration, and soil carbon sequestration) are envisioned frequently as necessary, desirable, feasible, and affordable, with minimal risks and barriers (compared to other options). This contrasts with other options envisaged as unnecessary risky or costly, notably ocean alkalization or fertilization, space-based reflectors, high-altitude sunshades, and albedo management via clouds. Moreover, only the options of afforestation and reforestation and soil carbon sequestration are expected to be widely deployed before 2035, which raise very real concerns about climate and energy policy in the near- to mid-term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The urgency of climate change means that low-carbon transitions are needed in large socio-technical systems such as energy and transportation. These transitions must be rapid, but also fair. An emerging body of evidence suggests that users have important roles in transitions, yet much previous research has examined user involvement while assuming it to be largely a positive force. This goes against a growing amount of evidence within sociotechnical studies that highlight the potentially obstructive or negative role that users may play in transitions and innovation. In this study, we pose a critical question: In what ways may users perpetuate injustices within a transition? To answer this question, we provide conceptual background on energy justice and user adoption of low-carbon energy and mobility technologies. We then analyse users and energy injustices in three low-carbon transitions – solar energy in Germany, electric vehicles in Norway, and smart meters in Great Britain – based on empirical data from interviews, focus groups, and internet forums. Our main contribution is to show how users in low-carbon transitions are not always positively engaged, or even neutral, but can introduce and contribute to inequality and exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) have a key role to play in understanding which factors and policies would motivate, encourage and enable different actors to adopt a wide range of sustainable energy behaviours and support the required system changes and policies. The SSH can provide critical insights into how consumers could be empowered to consistently engage in sustainable energy behaviour, support and adopt new technologies, and support policies and changes in energy systems. Furthermore, they can increase our understanding of how organisations such as private and public institutions, and groups and associations of people can play a key role in the sustainable energy transition. We identify key questions to be addressed that have been identified by the Platform for Energy Research in the Socio-economic Nexus (PERSON, see person.eu), including SSH scholars who have been studying energy issues for many years. We identify three main research themes. The first research theme involves understanding which factors encourage different actors to engage in sustainable energy behaviour. The second research theme focuses on understanding which interventions can be effective in encouraging sustainable energy behaviour of different actors, and which factors enhance their effects. The third research theme concerns understanding which factors affect public and policy support for energy policy and changes in energy systems, and how important public concerns can best be addressed as to reduce or prevent resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Meeting the Paris Agreement targets requires strong near-term climate change mitigation in all sectors of the economy. Increasing demand-side emission abatement efforts is one important area to pursue, yet there are significant barriers that must be overcome in order to realize its potential. We ask: What barriers may be hindering deep emissions reduction at the household level? What kinds of levers are available to achieve emission reductions? Based on an original and extensive qualitative dataset, our in-depth study of households in Bergen, Norway, shows that individuals perceive they are confronted with considerable individual, economic, and infrastructural barriers that prevent them from taking deep mitigation actions. Our results however also suggest that some barriers can be overcome with motivational levers such as the availability of more sustainable alternatives, support networks and by the positive emotions felt when having a positive impact on the environment. Other barriers are more difficult to overcome, pointing to the overarching lesson from our study that households will need to be forced or incentivized beyond voluntary efforts to achieve rapid and comprehensive decarbonization. The current policy approach, aimed mostly at nudging for voluntary mitigation actions, is wholly inadequate to achieve significant emission reductions. Our study indicates that households are open for increasingly including more "sticks" into climate policymaking. While there are significant challenges to individuals taking stronger mitigation action, these can be overcome by strengthening government policies targeting the patterns and, importantly, volumes of household consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can the Chinese emissions trading scheme (ETS) be redesigned or improved to better address issues of fairness and equity, innovation and learning, and awareness and social acceptance? In order to meet its 2030 carbon emission reduction pledges, the Chinese government has announced plans for a fully implementable national carbon ETS after 2020. This scheme is set to become the world’s most significant carbon trading market and it could cover half of all Chinese CO2 emissions (as much as 4 billion tons of carbon dioxide). In this study, we qualitatively analyze the Chinese ETS through the lens of three interconnected themes—equity, innovation, and awareness—which are disaggregated into six specific dimensions. We then explore these themes and dimensions with a mixed methods and original research design involving a survey of 68 Chinese experts as well as 34 semi-structured research interviews with respondents from local governments, financial institutions, technology service companies, universities, industries, and civil society groups. We find that uneven economic and social growth could exacerbate any initial permits allocation scheme that could be a cornerstone for an ETS. Substantial technological and institutional uncertainties exist that could also hamper development and enforcement. Low or negative awareness among the public and private sector were identified as also being significant barriers for ETS implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from an extensive content analysis of the UK parliamentary debate over shale gas, we use the UK shale gas case to explore how energy democracy themes are used and countered in the framing strategies of discourse coalitions in national political sites. Furthermore, we explore the extent to which these national political sites and discursive strategies are effective as institutions and practices through which to achieve energy democracy. We achieve this through an analysis of the success of the UK anti- and pro-shale gas development discourse coalitions in recruiting national political figures and influencing thinking and decision-making in parliament. In doing so, we bring together the literatures on discourse coalitions and energy democracy. We conclude with implications for both national policy as well as critical inquiry into environmental politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we explore the lived experiences of communities at the frontier of shale gas extraction in the United Kingdom. We ask: How do local people experience shale gas development? What narratives and reasoning do individuals use to explain their support, opposition or ambivalence to unconventional hydrocarbon developments? How do they understand their lived experiences changing over time, and what sorts of coping strategies do they rely upon? To do so, we draw insights from semi-structured interviews with 31 individuals in Lancashire, England, living or working near the only active shale gas extraction operation in the UK until the government moratorium was announced in December of 2019. Through these data, we identify several themes of negative experiences, including "horrendous" participation, community "abuse," disillusionment and "disgust," and earthquakes with the potential to "ruin" lives. We also identify themes of positive experiences emphasizing togetherness and community "gelling", environmental "awareness," everyday energy security with gas as a "bridging fuel," and local employment with "high quality jobs." Finally, we identify themes of ambivalent and temporally dynamic experiences with shale gas that move from neutral to negative regarding vehicle traffic, and neutral to positive regarding disgust with protesting behaviour and the diversion of community resources. Our study offers context to high level policy concerns and also humanizes community and resident experiences close to fracking sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on an extensive synthesis of semi-structured interviews, media content analysis, and reviews, this article conducts a qualitative meta-analysis of more than 560 sources of evidence to identify 38 visions associated with seven different low-carbon innovations – automated mobility, electric vehicles, smart meters, nuclear power, shale gas, hydrogen, and the fossil fuel divestment movement – playing a key role in current deliberations about mobility or low-carbon energy supply and use. From this material, it analyzes such visions based on rhetorical features such as common problems and functions, storylines, discursive struggles, and rhetorical effectiveness. It also analyzes visions based on typologies or degrees of valence (utopian vs. dystopian), temporality (proximal vs. distant), and radicalism (incremental vs. transformative). The article is motivated by the premise that tackling climate change via low-carbon energy systems (and practices) is one of the most significant challenges of the twenty-first century, and that effective decarbonization will require not only new energy technologies, but also new ways of understanding language, visions, and discursive politics surrounding emerging innovations and transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the problem of how to accelerate policies related to electric vehicles (EVs) in the Nordic countries Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. These four Nordic countries represent an interesting collection of cases by virtue of having common decarbonization targets extending to the transport sector, interlinked electric energy systems and a joint electricity market largely based on low-carbon energy while they are open societies bent on innovation, making them well adaptable to a transition toward electric mobility. Our analytical framework drawing from transition research, lock-in and path dependency and institutionalism enables us to discern technological, institutional and behavioral mechanisms which can have both constraining and enabling effects vis-à-vis this transition by means of shaping national socio-technical systems and regimes. On this basis, we also discuss how to develop policies accelerating the transition. We find that the incumbent industries can shape policy choice through the lock-in into institutional inter-dependencies. The accumulation of social and material features, and vested interests of actors, for its part can maintain regime level inertia, impeding the transition. Yet, technological lock-in can also enable EVs, by means of learning effects from technologically interrelated wind energy projects and available infrastructure in buildings that support the EV charging needs. Overall, the complexity of path-dependent mechanisms embedded in the dominant regimes, together with the diversity of emerging policy mixes, demands attention both on the technologies and broader socio-technical systems in order to properly assess the prospects of transition toward electric mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low-carbon transitions are often assumed as positive phenomena, because they supposedly reduce carbon emissions, yet without vigilance, there is evidence that they can in fact create new injustices and vulnerabilities, while also failing to address pre-existing structural drivers of injustice in energy markets and the wider socio-economy. With this in mind, we examine four European low-carbon transitions from an unusual normative perspective: that of energy justice. Because a multitude of studies looks at the co-benefits of renewable energy, low-carbon mobility, or climate change mitigation, we instead ask in this paper what are the types of injustices associated with low-carbon transitions? Relatedly, in what ways do low-carbon transitions worsen social risks or vulnerabilities? Lastly, what policies might be deployed to make these transitions more just? We answer these questions by first elaborating an "energy justice" framework consisting of four distinct dimensions—distributive justice (costs and benefits), procedural justice (due process), cosmopolitan justice (global externalities), and recognition justice (vulnerable groups). We then examine four European low-carbon transitions—nuclear power in France, smart meters in Great Britain, electric vehicles in Norway, and solar energy in Germany—through this critical justice lens. In doing so, we draw from original data collected from 64 semi-structured interviews with expert participants as well as five public focus groups and the monitoring of twelve large internet forums. We document 120 distinct energy injustices across these four transitions, including 19 commonly recurring injustices. We aim to show how when low-carbon transitions unfold, deeper injustices related to equity, distribution, and fairness invariably arise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the dynamic nature with which independent accountability mechanisms operate. Focusing on the World Bank, the authors argue that its Inspection Panel evolves according to internal and external pressures. In seeking to achieve equilibrium, and protect its authority and independence, the Panel has gone through several distinct phases: negotiation, emergence, protracted resistance, assertion of independence and authority, renewed tension, and contestation. The core novelty of the article is its application of concepts from outside the field of development studies — notably institutional accountability from the governance literature, and judicialization from the legal studies literature — to the topic of the Inspection Panel. Examining the Panel in this way demonstrates that accountability mechanisms represent a hybrid of transnational governance influenced by a range of actors including project‐affected peoples, national governments, managers and development donors. Accountability in development finance is about competing interests as well as competing conceptions and expectations of accountability. In such a complex and multi‐scalar system, the Panel is not only concerned with delivering well‐researched investigation reports; it is also an entity seeking to ensure its own survival, as well as an arbiter of its own brand of legitimacy and accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Brundtland Commission report 'Our Common Future' highlighted that residents in high-income countries lead lifestyles incompatible with planetary boundaries. Three decades later, consumption-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have continued to increase. To achieve 'well below 2°C' and 1.5 °C goals, consumption-related emissions must be substantially reduced in the coming decades. This paper provides insights on how to pursue 1.5 °C pathways through changes in household consumption. It draws on original data gathered in the project 'HOusehold Preferences for reducing greenhouse gas Emissions in four European High Income Countries' (HOPE) to analyse policies targeting and affecting direct and indirect GHG emissions in three household consumption categories (mobility, housing and food) in four countries (France, Germany, Norway and Sweden) and four medium-sized cities. This paper demonstrates discrepancies and similarities between current governmental policy approaches in the four countries and household perceptions of consumption changes with respect to policy mechanisms, responsibilities and space for acting on mitigation. Current demand-side policy strategies rely heavily on instruments of self-governance and nudging behaviour. Whilst some of our data suggests that households broadly accept this, it also suggests that governments could more actively lead and steer demand-side mitigation via adjusting and supplementing a comprehensive list of 20 climate policy measures currently in place in one or more of the case countries. The paper concludes by suggesting areas for more effective policy change and household-level climate change mitigation to feed the next update of climate pledges under the Paris Agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our study offers a comparative assessment of the economic, sociopolitical and environmental implications of the world's largest source of renewable electricity, hydropower. Theorists from many disciplines have questioned both the proper role and ostensible benefits from the generation of electricity from large-scale hydroelectric dams. In this study, we use 30 years of World Bank data from 1985 to 2014 and a research design with three mutually exclusive reference classes of countries: major hydropower producers, members of OPEC and all other countries. This is precisely so our analysis moves away from 'dam-centric' or single case study approaches to comparative analysis at the international scale. We examine and test six separate hypotheses related to (a) military conflict, (2) poverty, (3) economic growth, (4) public debt, (5) corruption and (6) greenhouse gas emissions. Our analysis lends statistical support to the idea that there is such a thing as a 'hydroelectric resource curse', although effects were not always significant and varied from small, medium to large. The possible benefits of hydroelectricity—improved energy access, economic development and positive spillover effects—are real, but they are all too frequently constrained. Planners, investors and researchers may therefore need to rethink their underlying assumptions about how they evaluate hydropower's risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most-studied issues regarding the role of natural resources in development is the so-called "resource curse": the paradoxical (and contested) situation in which a state with abundant resources has low rates of economic growth per capita, high levels of income inequality, low levels of democracy, high gender inequality, and high levels of domestic and international conflicts surrounding resources. Although the term seems to imply that the curse can apply to all resources, most research by political scientists, as well as by economists and other social scientists, examines the role of oil and hard minerals and omits many resources, including renewable energy resources. We argue that many of the causal mechanisms behind the curse, when it does manifest, hold for water-abundant states which have sufficient resources to create large hydroelectric projects. Drawing on illustrative examples of hydroelectric projects around the world, we demonstrate sufficient, albeit preliminary, evidence that most aspects of the resource curse literature apply to hydroelectric projects, at least in some states, and thus suggest the curse literature should be expanded to include water-abundance. Additionally, we add a new factor—fluctuating fuel supply—which could be an important variable for other resources as well. We conclude with suggestions for developing a research agenda and discuss policies to reduce the negative effects of resource curse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large technical systems (LTS) are integral to modern lifestyles but arduous to analyze. In this paper, we advance a conceptualization of LTS using the notion of mature “phases,” drawing from insights into innovation studies, science and technology studies, political science, the sociology of infrastructure, history of technology, and governance. We begin by defining LTS as a unit of analysis and explaining its conceptual utility and novelty, situating it among other prominent sociotechnical theories. Next, we argue that after LTS have moved through the (overlapping) phases proposed by Thomas Hughes of invention, expansion, growth, momentum, and style, mature LTS undergo the additional (overlapping) phases of reconfiguration, contestation (subject to pressures such as drift and crisis), and eventually stagnation and decline. We illustrate these analytical phases with historical case studies and the conceptual literature, and close by suggesting future research to refine and develop the LTS framework, particularly related to more refined typologies, temporal dimensions, and a broadening of system users. We aim to contribute to theoretical debates about the coevolution of LTS as well as empirical discussions about system-related use, sociotechnical change, and policy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Korea and Japan have been unwaveringly committed to a nuclear-focused energy supply system despite the contested nature of that technology and the Fukushima accident in 2011. The socio-political consequences of four nuclear-related facilities (Ulju, Gyeongju, Futaba, and Rokkasho) are explored through the lens of social peripheralisation. This framework suggests that nuclear facilities will migrate to communities that are geographically remote, economically marginal, politically powerless, culturally defensive, and environmentally degraded. Nuclear infrastructures in the four cases are imposed on peripheral regions, impairing not only the structure of local economies and political power, but also creating a discriminative structure in terms of social and environmental inequality. Peripheralisation suggests a deeper dynamic by which pro-nuclear attitudes become ‘locked in’ socially and culturally so that communities come to depend on the very processes that made them peripheral. Community dynamics, subnational struggles, and contests over local power relations may determine the future of nuclear power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]