New energy resources in the making
La fabrique des ressources renouvelables
Résumé
The social sciences have foregrounded the importance of the materiality of fossil energies in the political construction of democracies. Recently, they have begun to challenge the idea that renewable energies were naturally associated with more democratic political ideals. Building on these developments and on the premise that (renewable) energy resources are not simply given as such by nature, the chapter proposes a framework to explore the material assemblage of energy resources in four different cases-wind, solar, biomass energy and distributed load shedding. Importantly, the chapter points out the diverse ways in which these resources are assembled and highlights the related political effects. It shows that the democratic dimension of renewable energies should not be regarded as one of their inherent attributes, but as a possibility that depends on their socio-material assemblage.