How stakeholders legitimate ‘acceptable’ national energy transitions through spatial imaginaries and imagined publics: A Swedish case study

Low carbon energy transitions reconfigure geographies of energy generation, distribution, and consumption, and are often subject to contestation. Social acceptance research has neglected relations between socio-political and market acceptance, and the role of socio-spatial beliefs in legitimating technology deployment. This research addressed these gaps in two ways. First, we devised a novel methodology integrating participatory GIS in semi-structured interviews with government, energy industry and non-governmental stakeholders. Second, we investigated how socio-spatial resources - spatial imaginaries and imagined publics - are drawn upon by stakeholders to legitimate ‘acceptable’ current and future pathways of low carbon energy technology deployment, using Sweden as a case study. Thematic analysis revealed consensus between government and industry stakeholders in ‘othering’ two established, relational place imaginaries - ‘Northern Sweden’ and ‘Southern Sweden’. Established place imaginaries were legitimated through historic, economic, demographic and environmental characteristics, and associated with specific imagined publics (‘Northern People’, ‘Indigenous Sami’ and ‘Southern People’) with varying levels of ‘acceptance’. An emergent place imaginary (‘Mid-Sweden’) focused on contestation over high voltage power lines. These socio-spatial resources were invoked to legitimate where future hydrogen deployment and offshore wind should be placed. Findings make four contributions. First, we extend understanding of the inter-relations between socio-political and market dimensions of social acceptance. Second, we develop a novel approach to social acceptance integrating the concepts of place imaginaries and imagined publics as socio-spatial resources. Third, we show how these socio-spatial resources can be captured using mapping methodologies. Finally, we map a future critical-spatial social acceptance research agenda.