Crossing Borders: Social sciences and humanities perspectives on European energy systems integration

Abstract

Our chapter brings together four Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) scholars into a conversation about their research and policy engagements, working within History, Political Science, Sociology, and Science and Technology Studies. We develop a socio-technical perspective and turn that into a conceptual tool pack, to interrogate and explore the emerging concept of Energy Systems Integration (ESI) with a special interest in European energy integration. Our contributions include, first, advancing the concepts of socio-technical energy system and seamless web for our research topics. Second, we open up select frameworks for ESI using the socio-technical perspective and highlight very different interpretations of systems integration terminologies and their effects. Third, the chapter explores of how the production of scale matters greatly for integrated energy systems, from a variety of infrastructural scales to urban, national, and supranational scales. The chapter rounds up by suggesting ideas for future interdisciplinary research between SSH researchers and designers of more integrated energy systems.