Les temporalités entremêlées des processus de transition énergétique

Abstract

This article is devoted to the contemporary processes of low carbon energy transition. These processes are largely driven by future climate-energy scenarios that convey a simplistic representation of time. The scenarios focus on the tension between the long term (carbon emissions) and the short term (investments), a perspective that narrows down the attention we can pay to a diversity of intermediate temporalities, associated to local collective dynamics and heritages, which can play a role in the deployment of transition processes. To take into account the multiple (physical, biological, social) temporalities brought into play by these processes, this paper proposes a relational approach to time based on a pragmatic analytical framework. It aims at thinking about our “low carbon contemporaneities”. While the scenarios of transition are embedded in a homogeneous and empty time, without duration, the “low carbon contemporaneities” would be proposals of duration to be articulated. This approach makes it possible to follow the renewed forms of domination that emerge in the name of “transition” as well as the forms of emancipation that are invented on the margins of industrial capitalism, as well as in the midst of its ruins or through the rerouting of its means.

Keywords

• energy transition
• low carbon contemporaneities
• pragmatism
• multi-temporal perspective
• duration