ABSTRACT
Concerns about climate change, energy security, and green jobs have produced a resounding public call for renewable energy development in the U.S. Consequently, federal investments in renewable energy research and development have multiplied at an unprecedented rate.These investments presume broad public support for the new green energy economy.Yet national opinion polls often mask strong local resistance to the installation of new energy projects, including hydro, solar, biofuels and wind.Communities across rural America are challenging the transparency and accountability of the government decision-making that is vastly resculpting energy geographies. The news media has termed this conflict the “green civil war” between climate change mitigation and landscape preservation goals. Green energy programs have focused mainly on innovation and investment pipelines with
little attention to how the risks and benefits of a new clean energy economy are being redistributed across society. In particular, rural communities at the forefront of new energy development are asking why they are disproportionately expected to carry the burden of a lowcarbon future while urban residents continue their conspicuous use of energy.Wind energy opposition groups are concerned about economic, wildlife, health and visual impacts. This opposition is in part the consequence of outdated modes of public participation that fail to fully capture the socio-cultural dislocations and vulnerabilities that occur when vast new energy geographies emerge. Although national and local governments are rapidly investing in scientific and technological innovation, little attention has been given to constructing community-based research models that address the challenges of the new energy economy. Such models are necessary if residents and policy makers are to recognize, understand, and weigh carefully the opportunities and risks that accompany these landscape transformations. These political responses and debates come as no surprise to those who study technology
decision-making. Despite decades of analysis in Science and Technology Studies (STS) of the need for participatory technology assessment and community-based research (see section II), scholars are still at a loss for how to methodologically offer interventions. How do we actually do community-based research that matters to local communities and policy makers? Answering this question requires serious reflection on the social, emotional and temporal contours of action-research engagements.
