Mobilizing sociotechnical imaginaries of fossil-free futures – Electricity and biogas in public transport in Linköping, Sweden

Abstract

In response to concerns about climate change and fossil fuel reliance, Swedish national policy has set the ambitious goal of a fossil fuel independent transport fleet by 2030, opening up a widespread debate on renewable fuel choice. Across sectors and regions, this debate inspires competing visions for how this transition can be achieved. Using sociotechnical imaginaries for a theoretical background, this paper will examine two competing visions in the case of urban public transport in Linköping, Sweden. While the biogas sociotechnical imaginary is based on the socio-material reality of the existing local infrastructure system, the electricity imaginary is gaining widespread support including from national and international interests. Using interviews with fourteen key actors and document analysis, this paper seeks to understand how local actors understand biogas and electric buses as competing technologies and how they mobilize these antagonistic imaginaries in their own visions of the future. Most often, actors mobilize both the biogas and the electric imaginary alongside each other, suggestion an attempt at reconciling them at the local level. This reconciliation sheds light on the challenge of applying national imaginaries to local cases and indicates that the complexity of multi-level systems must be considered in large scale sustainability transitions.