Can Renewable Energy Artifacts have a Global Politics? Towards a Translocal Imaginary of Energy Democracy

In the 2020 Prague Virtual Conference of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), Langdon Winner was awarded the society’s John D. Bernal Prize jointly with Sharon Traweek. The Bernal Prize is awarded annually to individuals who have made distinguished contributions to the field of STS. Prize recipients include founders of the field of STS, along with outstanding scholars who have devoted their careers to the understanding of the social dimensions of science and technology. This response to Winner’s Bernal lecture considers how visions of energy democracy speak back to decarbonisation imperatives grounded in industrial-scale renewable energy technologies, and asks if these arguments might be further trans-nationalised.