Land, culture and energy.

The conceptual perspective of Culture and Energy aims to analyze spatial patterns of energy production, distribution and consumption at different geographical scales to find out and to make explicit the wishes, fears and thoughts that people have concerning issues related to sustainable energy. The normative action-guiding power behind scientific and technological facts results from embedding those facts into everyday-life, cultural, religious and aesthetic thinking and contexts. Those normative contexts and frames associated with sustainable energy are understood as collective imaginaries; they are closely connected to time factors, especially to the future. Fictional contexts can be found in nearly every planning-process, implementation or advising in the field of sustainable energy systems. Institutions are guided by future-scenarios that they want to reach or try to avoid. Fictions express collective normative assumptions that guide political, institutional, technical and individual plans and actions. They form strong drivers for ensuring sustainable energy systems but also build (hidden) barriers. Bringing fictions into consciousness and formulating and discussing them in an interdisciplinary and international context might transform barriers into drivers for ensuring environmental sustainability.