Article ID: CBB258858849

Historicizing renewables: Issues and challenges (2021)

unapi

Hasenöhrl, Ute (Author)
Kupper, Patrick (Author)


History and Technology
Volume: 37
Issue: 4
Pages: 397-410


Publication Date: 2021
Edition Details: Issue Theme: Historicizing renewables
Language: English

The essay discusses some main challenges involved in historicizing renewables. It highlights three approaches that we regard as central for re- and deconstructing the history of renewables, and which show potential for rethinking familiar narratives in both the history of technology and environmental history. First, we argue that the adoption or rejection of renewables was specific to place and time and thus can only be understood within a framework of sociotechnological change. Second, we stress that the term renewables has its own history and that the term and its equivalents not only represented a number of technologies and energy carriers but also signified certain ideas about present and future society. Third, we explain why a deeper knowledge of how renewable energies were utilized throughout history not only leads to a better understanding of the past, but might help to identify challenges and pitfalls in current energy transitions.

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Associated with

Article Frank Uekötter (2021) The revolt of the chemists: Biofuels, agricultural overproduction, and the chemurgy movement in New Deal America. History and Technology (pp. 429-445). unapi

Article Jeffrey T. Manuel (2021) Lessons from a forgotten fuel: assessing the long history of alcohol fuel advocacy and use in the United States. History and Technology (pp. 411-428). unapi

Article Nicole Hesse (2021) Wind power and rural modernization: wind-powered water supply systems in northern Germany and southern France, 1880–1950. History and Technology (pp. 446-467). unapi

Article Arne Kaijser (2021) Driving on wood: The Swedish transition to wood gas during World War Two. History and Technology (pp. 468-486). unapi

Article Felix Frey (2021) Putting oceans to work: Tidal energy in the USA and the USSR, 1930–1970. History and Technology (pp. 487-504). unapi

Article Irene Pallua (2021) The materiality of space heating: Heat pumps and heating transitions in Twentieth-century Switzerland. History and Technology (pp. 505-526). unapi

Article Odinn Melsted (2021) Eliminating fossil fuels: Iceland’s transition from coal and oil to geothermal district heating, 1930–1980. History and Technology (pp. 527-547). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB258858849/

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Authors & Contributors
Mandy de Wilde
Nina Klimburg-Witjes
Samantha Breslin
Kerr, Sophie-May
Taebi, Behnam
Michelle M. Camacho
Concepts
Development of technology; change in technology
Technoscience; science and technology studies
energy transition
Renewable energy resources
Sociotechnical systems
Energy resources and technologies
Time Periods
21st century
20th century
Modern
19th century
Places
United States
Switzerland
Norway
Germany
France
Denmark
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