Visible winds: The production of new visibilities of wind energy in West Germany, 1973–1991
Published online on December 27, 2021
Abstract
["Centaurus, Volume 63, Issue 4, Page 695-713, November 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nThe use of energy from wind has a multi‐faceted relationship to visibility. Between 1973 and 1991, various actors in the West German environmental movement made assertions about the visibility of renewable sources of power, but wind energy took on a particular prominence. In this article, the question of how different actors have used knowledge and the materiality of wind turbines for competing purposes is explored. Environmentalists attempted to create visible signs of a valid alternative energy future by tinkering with small, decentralized wind turbines, while the Federal Republic of Germany's Ministry of Research and established energy providers used the failure of the state‐subsidized large‐scale wind‐energy project GROWIAN to criticize renewables and brand their application as misguided. In both cases, actors created new wind energy visibilities to convey their conflicting interests—pitting those advocating a new, environmentally friendly energy system against those who sought consolidation of the large‐scale fossil‐nuclear energy system.\n"]