energy utilisation that need to be examined,
understood and assessed in relation to current and
future renewable energies policy. Our particular
concern here is with the relations between renewable
energy technologies and ‘the public’ – cast in various
guises and groups (Walker 1999) – and the multiple
roles and forms of engagement that are being
produced as the social organisation of renewable
energy technologies evolves and differentiates.
In this paper we draw on perspectives developed
in science and technology studies to consider how
changes in the deployment of renewable energy in
the UK require a far more embedded and multidi-
mensional conceptualisation of the roles, engagements
and potentiality of ‘the public’ within the energy
system. We show how as renewable energy develops
as a heterogeneous category of multiple sites, scales
and forms, and as more distributed systems of
provision and co-provision emerge (Van Vliet
et al.