Knowing and Governing Super-Wicked Problems: A Social Analysis of Low-Carbon Scenarios

Since various public and private actors at the international, supranational, national and subnational levels started to adopt long-term targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, low-carbon scenario analyses have flourished. Literature reveals an increasing number of analyses envisioning and exploring alternative images of low-carbon futures, as well as their adjacent transition pathways. Scenario approaches or “foresight” is intended to help policy-makers to navigate the maelstrom of confusion and conflicts associated with highly complex societal challenges such as climate change – i.e. the “super-wicked” problems. Typical scenario exercises aim at coping with uncertainty and conflicting values, and hence are often claimed as a suitable approach for knowing and governing super-wicked problems. When reviewing the scenario literature published over the recent years, we observe significant methodological developments, in particular at the level of the calculus or data-sets. These contributions have generated an increasing technical sophistication of scenario building methods, and contrast with the relative absence of social sciences research on scenarios. Scenario analyses have received little academic attention from social sciences, whether they are political science, sociology, philosophy of science or science and technology studies. By providing a SHS-analysis of low-carbon scenarios, the present thesis contributes to bridge this research gap. Scenarios are here understood as “boundary objects” linking different social worlds: science and policy, but also natural and social sciences. This thesis aspires to create an enhanced understanding on how scenario analyses perform such “boundary work”. More specifically, the following analysis of low-carbon scenarios is based on a twofold perspective focusing, on the one hand, on the interactions between low-carbon scenarios and governance (i.e. link between science and policy), and, on the other hand, on the making of knowledge about governance in low-carbon scenarios (i.e. link between natural and social sciences). In other words, it explores “scenarios in governance” and “governance in scenarios”. The thesis project includes three research axes, each based on its particular empirics. A first study explores the interactions between low-carbon scenarios and governance on the basis of a multiple case study analysing the role of four energy foresight studies in policy-making. The other two studies focus on the making of knowledge about governance in low-carbon scenarios. One of them provides an assessment of the knowledge needed to steer the low-carbon transition. The other one aims at contributing to the debate on the relations between quantitative modelling and social sciences by exposing a critical review of socio-technical energy transition models. The objective of the present thesis thus consists in providing an empirical contribution to social sciences research on low-carbon scenarios.Doctorat en Sciences