Urban wind energy futures in the making: Energy plazas, hotspots, and enclaves

Abstract

This paper examines how alternative wind energy futures emerge in processes of implementing innovative wind energy projects in cities. Although future-making is central to energy transitions, the socio-material processes through which futures come into being are often only considered implicitly in futures studies. We analyse three cases of small-scale urban wind energy projects underpinned by visions of urban wind energy. In doing so, we examine how diverse wind energy futures are made through the assembling of urban wind energy visions, small-scale wind energy technologies, urban spaces, and practices of energy production and consumption at particular sites. We find that the assembling of human and non-human elements results in three distinct futures-in-the-making: the energy plaza, the energy hotspot, and the energy enclave. For the field of futures studies, this implies that understanding processes of future-making requires recognizing the material and spatial context in which such processes take place. For society, these energy futures-in-the-making contribute to the reimagining of wind energy ownership, and the ways in which we access, engage, and live with wind energy in cities. We also show that the future of wind energy can be small-scale, decentralised, and embedded in urban environments, which challenges the dominant future vision of large-scale, centralised, and remote rural and offshore wind energy systems. • Urban actors’ attempts to implement urban wind energy technologies are analysed as future-making processes • Futures emerge in relational networks that include humans and non-humans • Urban wind energy futures emerge through the assembling of wind energy visions, wind energy technologies, urban places, and energy production and consumption practices • The assembling of wind energy futures is a contingent and situated process shaped by space and circumstance • Emerging urban wind energy futures contribute to the reimagining of how we own, access, engage, and live with wind energy