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From the World2 and World3 models to contemporary Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) that model carbon neutral emission pathways, global computer models have served as virtual laboratories for addressing economic, environmental and technological concerns together. Representing technological change has been a controversial element of global modelling efforts because, to a great extent, it sets the parameters on conceivable futures. To retrace this history, this article analyses four moments when modellers debated technological change: the controversy spurred by The Limits to Growth in the 1970s; subsequent global future studies during that decade; the IIASA Energy in a Finite World study in the 1980s; and the shift to endogenous technological change in IAMs in the 2000s. It shows that the notion of technological change as a predictable parameter affecting the future of society was not a given. Technological change progressively became a parameter in models as more elaborate methodologies were developed to simulate it. When modellers began to focus on climate action in the 1990s and 2000s, their interest in the relationship between technological change and social change dwindled. The increasing skill with which modellers formally represented technological dynamics was commensurate to the decline of heated discussions over how conflicting worldviews shaped simulations.

Greenhouse gas emission scenarios are key in analyses of human interference with the climate system. They are mainly produced by one category of computer models: Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs). We analyse how IAM research organised into a community around the production of socio-economic scenarios during the preparation of the IPCC AR5 (2005-2014). We seek to describe the co-emergence of a research community, its instruments, and its domain of applicability. We highlight the role of the IPCC process in the making of the IAM community, showing how IAMs worked their way to an influent position. We then survey three elements of the repertoire that served to organise collective work on scenarios in interaction with the IPCC and the European Union, and which now frames the community and its epistemic practices. This repertoire needs to articulate epistemic practices with the pursuit of policy relevance, which shows how epistemic communities and patterns of co-production materialise in practical arrangements.

Projects have become crucial devices in the practice and governance of research. Drawing on the participant ethnography of a two-year interdisciplinary project on microbial bioenergy, this chapter inquires how projectification translates into collective research dynamics. It argues that to understand what projects are and how they affect research practices and communities, it is necessary to look beyond their influence on the organisation of research work. Seeking to delineate the project as a group, the chapter analyses three versions of the project-ed community: in documents, in institutional arrangements, and in daily research. This shows that projects cannot be reduced to temporary arenas of research. They are also argumentative devices that justify and display the excellence and relevance of specific scientific endeavours, as well as projection devices – they serve to imagine future research communities and to start building them. In that, projects are highly strategic entities that integrate scientific practices into coherent narratives to further the interests and ambitions of various parties; but they are also enmeshed in practical matters, because to build communities, researchers have to develop concrete repertoires that are materially embodied.

International audience; While there is a wealth of research on the history, philosophy and epistemology of economics, few studies approach economics as a practical and material endeavour in the way STS and ethnographies of science have approached natural sciences. To explore how objectivity is practically accomplished in laboratory economic experiments, we focus on a, at the face of it, modest and mundane thing: the written instructions that guide experimental subjects in the lab. In a material-semiotic perspective, these instructions can be understood as text-devices. We follow this text-device 'on the move' from its very writing, through the lab, the review process and out into the journal article. To do so, we analyse "text-author ensembles": journal articles together with practice-oriented interviews with their authors. We show that the instructions act not simply as a text, but as an experimental instrument that also performs the procedure of experimental economics. They draw together the procedural, material and rhetorical dimensions of experimental work in economics, and link the lab setting to collective validation procedures within the discipline of economics. To achieve this, experimental economists rely on qualitative writing skills refined in collective writing and reviewing practices. This particular text-device 'on the move' alert us not only to the role of writing and writing skills in the production of scientific knowledge, but to the role of texts as material and semiotic objects that can produce not only facts, but labs and disciplines too, and that are key to the accomplishment of objectivity in experimental economics.

Across Europe and the OECD, the bioeconomy is promoted as that which will succeed the carbon economy: an economy based in ‘the bio’ that will be innovative, sustainable, responsible and environmentally friendly. Yet how to critically approach an economy justified not only by its accumulative potentials but also its ability to do and be good? This paper suggests the concept of ‘the good economy’ as an analytical tool for investigating how economic practice is entangled in versions of the good. Building upon the classic contributions of Weber, Thompson and Foucault in combination with valuation studies, this paper shows how the good economy concept can be employed to examine how the economic and the good are intertwined. Empirically, the paper teases out how what is made to be good in the bioeconomy is radically different than in economies of the recent past. While ‘the good economy’ of the early oil and aquaculture economy concerned how to insert this economy into society in a good manner, society is surprisingly absent in the contemporary bioeconomy. The bioeconomy is enacted as an expert issue, pursued by the tools of economic valuation, and based in the unquestioned idea that ‘the bio’ makes any economy good.

International audience; Social studies of science have for many years analyzed and demonstrated the key role of experiments to science and the making of facts. But what is the role of experiments in market work? And what, if anything, can we learn from them about markets and commodities? It is perhaps tempting to say that we can learn very little. This paper investigates a series of market research experiments investigating consumers' valuations of farmed fish, and these are almost comical in their painstaking attention to mundane details. However, when looked into closely, they provide key insights into commodification processes and the scholarly literature to understand them. Most importantly, their analysis allows us to grasp how commodities do not simply emerge as the outcome of a one way process directed towards the market, but through a relational process that jointly works with and acts upon things and people, markets and production. The paper works with the notion of co-modification to trace and stay close to these relational processes. In doing this the paper simultaneously strives for an approach that is not framed by the dominant conceptual distinction between production and market, but instead directed towards the materiality and activeness of the things exchanged. The notion of co-modification emphasises that there is more to market that the human hand. The paper shows that it can also be used in a stronger sense to suggest that commodification is a process where things, people, production methods and markets are actively modifying one another.

International audience; At the core of renewable energy project development is the work of turning things (roof, site) into productive assets (solar roof, wind power site) through the siting of material devices (turbines, PV panels). The resulting assets convert an untamed flow (sun, wind) into electricity dubbed ‘renewable’ and eligible to stable remuneration (‘feed-in’ tariff). They are valued (tradable projects/portfolios) and they produce value (marketable electricity). Assembling productive-enough assets implies engaging things in hybrid agencements by requalifying their pre-existing usages and/or users.Our contribution starts from two case studies of politically engaged project developments: a mutualised PV project carried out by farmers (Fermes de Figeac, Lot, France), and a wind farm repowering in a European migratory corridor involving bird watchers and a wind power developers (Narbonnaise, Languedoc-Roussillon, France). These cases allow us to describe the socio-technical and economic reconfigurations through which sunlit rooftops and a windy site are turned into assets, and made to generate revenue streams. We further look at what these reconfigurations produce, which allows us to discuss the forms of rentierships entailed and the way in which we define assets.As these processes take place at the junction with financial valuation, conveyed by developers business models (project/portfolio TRIs, relation with banks), they additionally make the case for discussing the relation between capitalisation (TRI requirements) and asset making.

International audience; Focusing on a successful local photovoltaic project in France, this paper retraces the emergence and constitution of a territorial capacity to take part in the development of renewable energy as driven by a private actor (an agricultural cooperative) that relied on the combination of policy support, of a tradition of mutualisation, and of its territorial implantation. A relational perspective on innovation and entrepreneurship is adopted to describe the various entanglements that hold this project together. The development of a local renewable energy project and its community is seen as a collective endeavour that requires to establish and consolidate relationships between people and things; relationships are negotiated, tested and shaped through series of trials. I pay particular attention to the material and cognitive devices that are used to articulate the market policy framework and the territory (understood as a geographical, patrimonial and social entity), particularly by organising mutualisation. This enables me to explore how supporting policies and the territory are mobilised and enacted in the course of the project, and the extent to which both are transformed in the process. Supporting policies are turned into a tool for territorial innovation and development, while the tradition of territorial mutualisation that is constitutive of the cooperative that promoted the project becomes a way to provide access to a market and to maximise and redistribute associated profits. This highlights the entanglements through which a specific conception of equity is enacted in a project, and redistributive concerns are incorporated into an economics-centred policy device.

This chapter focuses on the period between the late 1970s and the adoption of the Directive on the internal electricity market in 1996. This period saw the appearance of feed-in tariffs as well as the emergence of a European Union approach to renewable energy policy, though without direct connections between the two. Cointe and Nadai retrace the origins of FITs, starting from their introduction in Germany and Denmark as a tool to integrate wind power into existing electricity systems and showing how they turned into renewable energy support instruments. They then analyse early European renewable energy policy, stressing that it was guided by the ideal of a liberalised market as a device for economic and social optimisation.

International audience; This chapter offers a critical examination of the conduct of market-based energy transition. Drawing on four case studies from France - tree stumps as conventional fuelwood, non-residential PV production, the development of ‘smart home’ infrastructure, and the market valuation of residential load shedding – the chapter takes a market studies approach and offers fine-grained accounts of how markets work in practice. Unsurprisingly, the four cases presented here illustrate ways in which markets can lead to positive or negative outcomes in both energy change achievements and participation in steering these changes. They suggest that the potential of markets in relationship to the energy transition depend notably on what the state decides to make of them.

This chapter offers a detailed sociological perspective on the role of investment-oriented policy instruments (subsidies, fixed tariffs, tenders) in triggering and shaping the recent development of renewable energies in three countries (France, Germany, and Tunisia). Bringing together recent developments in STS (concerned markets, capitalisation), it shows that, despite their economic framing, these instruments trigger processes which deal with multiple values. They also sustain the emergence of collectives concerned with their effects—called their milieu—which they become co-dependent upon. Such processes lead to iterative adjustments and developments that carry with them their own politics. While they sustain the emergence of political ends beyond those directly foregrounded by these instruments, they also prove to be very unevenly equipped to address emergent concerns.

International audience; This chapter offers a detailed sociological perspective on the role of investment-oriented policy instruments (subsidies, fixed tariffs, tenders) in triggering and shaping the recent development of renewable energies in three countries (France, Germany and Tunisia). Bringing together recent developments in STS (concerned markets, capitalisation), it shows that, despite their economic framing, these instruments trigger processes which deal with multiple values. They also sustain the emergence of collectives concerned with their effects – called their ‘milieu’ - which they become co-dependent upon. Such processes lead to iterative adjustments and developments that carry with them their own politics. While they sustain the emergence of political ends beyond those directly foregrounded by these instruments, they also prove to be very unevenly equipped to address emergent concerns.

The chapter retraces the period from 2008 to 2015 as a phase of many reforms and reconsiderations in renewable electricity policies throughout the European Union. Focusing on the example of photovoltaics, Cointe and Nadai show that feed-in tariffs were re-opened and re-politicised along new lines. The authors outline several challenges in the design of feed-in tariffs as they were addressed and discussed in the literature. They then discuss the reception of these evolutions by the European Commission. The Commission eventually shunned feed-in tariffs and encouraged their phase-out, based on a concern for investment security and for the operation of the single market. This suggests the internal electricity market is now conceived primarily as a tool for the optimal orientation of investment.

The chapter analyses two evolutions in European renewable electricity policy between 2001 and 2008. The first was a sophistication of renewable electricity support schemes, in particular feed-in tariffs. The second was the consolidation of expertise about renewable electricity policy. Cointe and Nadai describe how feed-in tariffs were re-arranged in their design and in their relations to European law. In parallel, they trace the expansion of literature on renewable electricity policy. This production of expertise was partly driven by the European Commission and its will to coordinate renewable electricity policy across Europe via regular assessments. The chapter ends on an analysis of the validation of feed-in tariffs as “market-based” by the Commission, arguing that it also reflected a shift in focus from competition to investment.

The introductory chapter describes the intention of the book and provides an overview of feed-in tariffs and renewable energy policy in the European Union (EU). It outlines the perimeter and analytical approach of the book. Cointe and Nadai first describe feed-in tariffs and their origins. They review milestones of European renewable energy policy and their relations to the diffusion of feed-in tariffs in Member States. Having provided this background information, Cointe and Nadai account for their choice to rely on a combination of documentation from European institutions, expert sources, and academics. They define socio-technical agencements and explain what an analysis of feed-in tariffs as agencements brings to an understanding of renewable energy policy and EU policy.

This chapter is interested in the period corresponding to the elaboration of the Directive on the promotion of renewable electricity, from 1996 to 2001. It looks at debates about renewable electricity policy at the European Union level as they became more specific: as national renewable electricity policies developed and diversified, attention started to focus on instrument choice. Having described the range of instruments in use, Cointe and Nadai take the opposition between FITs and TGCs as a vantage point to analyse the Commission’s vision and its discrepancies with national policies. They show how the Commission was guided by an ideal of harmonisation via the market that was not the priority in all Member States. They trace the emergence of similar debates in academic circles.

International audience; The social sciences have foregrounded the importance of the materiality of fossil energies in the political construction of democracies. Recently, they have begun to challenge the idea that renewable energies were naturally associated with more democratic political ideals. Building on these developments and on the premise that (renewable) energy resources are not simply given as such by nature, the chapter proposes a framework to explore the material assemblage of energy resources in four different cases-wind, solar, biomass energy and distributed load shedding. Importantly, the chapter points out the diverse ways in which these resources are assembled and highlights the related political effects. It shows that the democratic dimension of renewable energies should not be regarded as one of their inherent attributes, but as a possibility that depends on their socio-material assemblage.

Entre 2008 et 2012, la coopérative des Fermes de Figeac a installé un parc photovoltaïque mutualisé dispersé sur une centaine de toitures. Ce projet visait à capter l’opportunité des tarifs d’achat lorsqu’ils étaient à leur plus haut niveau, mais également à la mutualiser et à la territorialiser. Pour analyser la constitution d’une capacité entrepreneuriale et financière adaptée au tarif, mais capable de le transformer, cet article se penche sur l’articulation entre investissement, mutualisation et territoire telle qu’articulée et mise en oeuvre dans le modèle d’affaires du projet., From 2008 to 2012, the rural cooperative “Fermes de Figeac”, situated in the Southwest of France, carried out a mutualised photovoltaic project that consisted in the installation of photovoltaic systems on about a hundred rooftops. The aim of this project was not only to seize the opportunity provided by feed-in tariffs when they were at their highest level, but also to do so in a mutualized, territorial way. In order to analyse the constitution of an entrepreneurial and financial capacity that is both adapted to the frame of feed-in tariffs and able to transform it, this article looks at the articulation of financial investment, mutualisation and territory as it is performed in the project business model and in its realization.

Le Haut-Commissariat des Nations unies pour les refugies (HCR) et l’Organisation internationale pour les migrations (OIM) sont en premiere ligne pour porter secours et assistance aux personnes deplacees par des catastrophes naturelles. Comment ces operations trouvent-elles leur place dans le mandat de ces organisations ? Quels sont leurs roles respectifs dans la gestion des crises et les instruments a leur disposition ? Jean-Francois Durieux est directeur de la Division de l’appui et de la gestion des programmes au sein du HCR, tandis que Philippe Boncour est directeur du Dialogue international sur les migrations au sein de l’OIM. Ils copresident le groupe de travail special sur les migrations et deplacements de populations cree au sein de la task force “Changement climatique” du Groupe permanent inter-agences (IASC). La rencontre de ces deux specialistes de la question des migrations environnementales permet de faire le point sur l’organisation de la gestion de ces deplacements de population au plan international.

International audience; In France as in many European countries, grid-connected photovoltaics (PV) took off between 2008 and 2010, driven by an overly attractive feed-in tariff scheme that failed to take into account the rapid evolutions of PV technologies and markets. This unexpected expansion of a policy-dependent market led to a moratorium on feed-in tariffs followed by a consultation with stakeholders in 2010-2011. This article analyses the build-up, explosion and resolution of this crisis by focusing on the market and political effects of feed-in tariffs in the years 2008 to 2011. The consultation is analysed as an attempt at the political organisation and representation of the emerging PV sector. The paper shows that it failed to constitute a reliable representation of it, and that the government addressed the difficulty to control the sector by closing down both the market and the political space. It concludes that the good functioning of feed-in tariffs requires work of market organisation as much as of political construction, since their regulation relies on market data and on political compromises.

International audience; This paper is interested in sustainable energy initiatives in French rural areas. It follows up the UK debate about ‘localism’. UK policy localism has been cast as neoliberal, framing communities as competent and competitive actors, morally responsible and accountable for their destiny.In France, the emerging policy localism is surfing on an ongoing political structuration of innovative rural territories – ‘Positive Energie Territories’ (TEPOS). The paper presents and discusses the results of a rough census (undertaken in 2012) of significant experiences in this domain. It points to a few experiences and depicts them as risky, trial-and-error transcalar processes that endow locally emergent energy issues with a political dimension. To this extent, they amount to a different way of doing energy policy.The analysis points to an ambiguity in French policy localism. This localism may pave the way for an upscaling of the ongoing TEPOS political structuration, or tend to make TEPOS into demonstration territories within a neoliberal RTD policy approach. In the latter case, it may not necessarily fit territories to pursue their political structuration with a view to the energy transition.

International audience; The social sciences have foregrounded the importance of the materiality of fossil energies in the political construction of democracies. Recently, they have begun to challenge the idea that renewable energies were naturally associated with more democratic political ideals. Building on these developments and on the premise that (renewable) energy resources are not simply given as such by nature, the chapter proposes a framework to explore the material assemblage of energy resources in four different cases–wind, solar, biomass energy and distributed load shedding. Importantly, the chapter points out the diverse ways in which these resources are assembled and highlights the related political effects. It shows that the democratic dimension of renewable energies should not be regarded as one of their inherent attributes, but as a possibility that depends on their socio-material assemblage.