How does science and technology studies contribute to climate mitigation research? Advanced review of infrastructure as a concept and method

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to review how Science and Technology Studies (STS) has contributed to climate change mitigation research. We focus on large-scale infrastructures as a key topic of both mitigation efforts and recent STS scholarship. The paper assesses the conceptual and methodological treatments in this field, uses literature evidence to identify research gaps, and suggests potential topics for future research. Our research firstly contributes to the use of STS approaches in the novel field of climate change mitigation infrastructure, asking how scholarship in the field has learned from STS and developed STS further. Second, we examine how infrastructures are approached in this literature and conclude that the reviewed works almost exclusively associate infrastructure with physical supply systems. This is paradoxical since several of them also advocate a socio-technical perspective on infrastructures, which would require much more substantiation of the social aspects than they seem to provide. Third, we explore the fits between theoretical frameworks and methods in this field and discover a strong reliance on case studies, literature reviews, and theoretical-conceptual discussions. This situation suggests that methodological advancements in STS infrastructure studies has still been untapped in this area.