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IntroductionIt has become increasingly clear that to make themajor carbon reductions being called for to mitigatefuture climate change there will need to be movestowards energy systems that incorporate a far greateruse of renewable energy technologies (Stern 2007;European Union Council 2007). Such emergingenergy systems will, at least in the medium term,take a hybrid form, with large-scale coal, gas andnuclear generation operated alongside more distributedand multi-scaled configurations of renewable energytechnologies. What this might imply for technicalengineering, regulation and market performance isbeing increasingly discussed in the academic andpolicy literatures (e.g. Pehnt et al. 2006; Sauter andWatson 2007; Willis 2006). However, there are alsoprofound social and geographical implicationsembedded within emerging patterns of renewableenergy utilisation that need to be examined,understood and assessed in relation to current andfuture renewable energies policy. Our particularconcern here is with the relations between renewableenergy technologies and ‘the public’ – cast in variousguises and groups (Walker 1999) – and the multipleroles and forms of engagement that are beingproduced as the social organisation of renewableenergy technologies evolves and differentiates.In this paper we draw on perspectives developedin science and technology studies to consider howchanges in the deployment of renewable energy inthe UK require a far more embedded and multidimensional
conceptualisation of the roles, engagements
and potentiality of ‘the public’ within the energy
system. We show how as renewable energy develops
as a heterogeneous category of multiple sites, scales
and forms, and as more distributed systems of
provision and co-provision emerge (Van Vliet et al.
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