Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Energy Research & Social Science journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/erss Original research article Cosmopolitan, dynamic, and contested energy futures: Navigating the pluralities and polarities in the energy systems of tomorrow Laurence Delina ⁎ , Anthony Janetos Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University, 67 Bay State Road, Boston, MA, 02215, USA ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Futures Energy transitions Uncertainty ABSTRACT The futures of energy are cosmopolitan, dynamic, and full of contradictions. There are multiple actors and institutions with multiple aims and interests advancing the futures of energy; at the same time, these futures are envisioned differently and will, therefore, be produced and negotiated heterogeneously. This context highlights that energy futures are not free of cultural, political, and economic influence, and hence can be best-approached with cosmopolitan and plural lenses. This collection evidences plurality in terms of the disparate geographic locations, disciplinary foundations, conceptual frameworks, and methodological choices of our authors and their papers. This breadth points to the many roads of imagining the sociotechnicality of energy futures and of making these expectations real and durable. We suggest embracing plurality and reflexivity, and understanding the politics of energy futures, at the same time that we also issue a caveat on the complexity of these processes. Claiming no comprehensiveness or closure, our collective contributions should be taken as works-in-progress in the unending quest to understand, analyze, and critique the plurality of the futures of energy and the ways we imagine, navigate, and contest them. 1. Introduction Energy—from its production to distribution to its use—has become a vital centerpiece in which contemporary societies order themselves and their institutions across local, national, and international scales [1]. These orderings, however, are in constant flux in the ongoing processes of change—processes that are either fluid or chaotic, depending on where one observes them and at what moment/s in time. The place and timing of energy transitions—the term that describes these processes, universally—are two of the most prominent themes in this journal. Yet, the processes by which the futures of energy are imagined and produced, by whom, under what goals and circumstances, in- strumentalities and mechanisms, and the moments at which they are contradicted and negotiated, and erased from or embedded within public discourse—all of these components are often under-studied and under-appreciated in the academic, business, and policy worlds. Accounts, stories, and narratives of these tensions and contradictions are important sites for engaging in the imagination and the production of both the futures of energy and the future of energy studies. These are also meaningful points of departure for academic, business, and policy analysis alike since they allow us to think about marginalized, yet important, issues such as whose futures are at stake and whose futures need to be given premium in future scholarship and practices; in other words, the processes of energy transitions touch upon areas of justice, equity, democracy, sustainability, and fairness—ethos that are uni- versally upheld as important in modern life (cf. [2–6]). While one may say that the entire journal itself is dedicated to these ends, there are but a few papers that rigorously take into account, analyze, and situate the social studies of energy with that of the futurity of energy. 1 This col- lection is an attempt not necessarily to address this gap but to expand and enrich the landscape by which we envisage and process these fu- tures. The study of the futures of energy from a social science perspective comes at a time when science is under constant attack [11–14], of a ‘post-truth’ world (see for examples a series curated and edited by Schiølin [15], and a special volume in this journal on post-truth politics and energy transitions), and of democracy under threat (see a series curated and edited by Simmet [16]). The dynamics in the politics, technologies, economics, and governance of energy are indeed moving fast. Politically, many governments continue to advocate for continued reliance on fossil fuel systems using arguments that the transition https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.11.031 Received 30 September 2017; Received in revised form 29 November 2017; Accepted 30 November 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: ldelina@bu.edu (L. Delina). 1 These, however, have already started appearing in the pages of this journal. Some examples of recent work on the futurity of energy include those by Bergman [7], Strenger and Nichols [8], and Raven [9]. Obviously, the inaugural paper that borne this journal also points to that sense of futurity [10]. Energy Research & Social Science 35 (2018) 1–10 Available online 06 December 2017 2214-6296/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T