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The politics of monitoring microplastics

The politics of monitoring microplastics

Noah Münster & Ulrike Felt

Over the past two decades, microplastics have emerged as an environmental concern, attracting increasing attention in scientific research, policy and regulation. Their ubiquity and the difficulty of controlling and confining them have made them one of the most important wicked environmental problems contemporary societies have to face. But where to go to study the complex articulations between microplastics and the environment?

Since the early 1970s, it has been clear that microplastics are ubiquitous in marine systems, and research has focused very much on this environment; much less attention has been paid to freshwater systems, which have been conceptualised mainly as transport pathways transferring plastics to the oceans. More recently, there has been an increased focus on the sources, abundance and impacts of microplastics in freshwater ecosystems. In our research, we focus on a particular part of the freshwater system, wastewater, because it is an important pathway for microplastics and therefore a privileged place to study this issue. Wastewater is often presented as a mirror of contemporary societies, promising real-time insights into chemical pollution, the spread of pathogens or patterns of illicit drug use. The EU, in its revision of the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive, has now proposed mandatory monitoring of microplastic pollution.

Through interviews with wastewater experts, site visits in waste water treatment plants, document analysis and a review of research debates, we explore how microplastic monitoring (as required by policymakers) is being put into practice. We therefore investigate how microplastics as a matter of concern can take shape in the political realm. However, studying monitoring means, on the one hand, engaging with the classificatory work that is taking place – a key site for environmental policy making – as there is widespread agreement that it makes little sense to treat microplastics as a single pollutant but as standing for a multiplicity of very different objects. On the other hand, we need to look at how microplastics in wastewater can actually be tracked, i.e. measured and characterised, and what building such a tracking infrastructure would entail. Looking at the complex relationships between monitoring, classifying and measuring (they mutually shape each other) will also allow us to show how the making of ‘facts’ about microplastics also frames how matters of concern can take shape and how these can or cannot be turned into matters of care.

Turning Microplastics into a European Policy Object

Turning Microplastics into a European Policy Object

Ulrike Felt & Kaye Mathies

Small plastic debris in ocean environments have been discussed in scientific literature the first time in the early 1970s. However, they have only gained public and policy attention in the last decade. In the EU, concern about microplastics became mainstream with the European Circular Economy Action Plan published by the European Commission in December 2015. Governing microplastics is not only challenging because of the ubiquity of microplastics in the environment, but also due to diversity of materials that fall under this label, their diverse sizes, forms and chemical compositions and a lack of clear classification and standardized measurements.

We will investigate how microplastics become a matter of concern for the EU and how it is transformed into a “European policy object” with all the challenges this brings with it. This means carefully analysing the ecosystem of EC documents in an effort to see how microplastics as a key residue is framed as a matter of concern and how it is turned into a matter of care through regulation.

“You can’t have one without the other”. Nation-states, data centers and the twin transition

“You can’t have one without the other”. Nation-states, data centers and the twin transition

Carsten Horn & Ulrike Felt

The concept of the “twin transition” has emerged as the latest buzzword in European Commission (EC) policy documents, spanning from industrial strategy to pandemic recovery plans and zero-pollution initiatives. Rooted in the vision spelled out in the European ‘Green Deal’, it presents a narrative that promises multiple benefits: not only do the green and digital transitions complement and reinforce each other, but they are also anticipated to enhance the EU’s competitiveness, generate new sustainable jobs, and sustain economic growth.

Drawing on policy documents from the EC and member states, interviews with policymakers, industry experts, and civil society representatives, as well as ethnographic research conducted at a data center conference, our analysis delves into the discourse surrounding the twin transition.

On one hand, we explore situated imaginaries of the twin transition. In Austria, this perspective reveals its integration within a broader state transformation where the state assumes centralized control over data. On the other hand, we focus on the implementation of these visions. In Ireland, this sheds light on how the twin transition serves as justification for the burgeoning data center industry, which is beginning to face resistance from the public.

Image credit: adapted from Royal Schiphol Group and PA Consulting; https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/10/twin-transition-playbook-3-phases-to-accelerate-sustainable-digitization/

Dismantling the French Graphite Reactors

Dismantling the French Graphite Reactors

Ange Pottin & Ulrike Felt

The French graphite moderated reactors (GMR) were stopped in the early 1990s and are now confronted with questions of decomissioning.  Inherited from a time with lower standards of care for the afterlife of nuclear installations, they contain important quantities of irradiated graphite that has become unstable over the years. We analyze the decommissioning of French GMRs as a practice of both caring and waiting. While having initially followed a “deferred decommissioning” strategy (an activity that turns an operating machine into a residue through technical, legal, and organizational processes), by now the plan is to reach full decommissioning around 2100. This defacto long-term waiting strategy is controversial. The regulators defend the norm of “immediate decommissioning”; the operator points to the absence of a final disposal site for graphite impeding the full transformation of GMR into waste.

This case (1) illustrates that waste is not a clear-cut entity, but the product of ever-changing standards and practices of care, and (2) points to the need for closer scrutiny of the multiple temporalities co-existing in the decommissioning process.

Image: By Clicgauche – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3373581

A renaissance of nucelar energy in Europe? Exploring the transformation of regimes of valuation

A renaissance of nucelar energy in Europe? Exploring the transformation of regimes of valuation

Ulrike Felt

In March 2024, Brussels hosted a series of events dedicated to the role of nuclear energy in achieving “the EU’s climate neutrality, competitiveness and energy security objectives”. This Nuclear Energy Summit provided a platform for EU President von der Leyen to set out her perspectives on the future of nuclear energy in Europe. She emphasized that while European countries may hold quite different views on nuclear power, she firmly believes that “in countries that are open to the technology, nuclear technologies can play an important role in clean energy transitions”. She continues referring to “the global energy crisis caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine”, stressing that “many countries are giving a fresh look to the potential role that nuclear might play”. However, the narrative surrounding nuclear energy extends beyond dependence on Russia and the ongoing war. It connects the reappraisal of nuclear energy with the climate crisis and the challenges faced by nation-states in achieving net-zero targets. The nuclear thus is wrapped in a new promise: no longer it is “to cheap to meter” as this was the case in the 1950ies, now the nuclear will “safeguard our energy security [as] countries look to reduce their dependence on imported fossil fuels”. And she completes her assessment of energy choices by using European competitiveness as a further register of valuing (Heuts and Mol, 2013), “as nuclear power can provide a reliable anchor for electricity prices”[1].

The Nuclear Energy Summit serves as both a pivotal moment and a specific context for observing the situated and situational nature of valuation practices concerning energy choices. We can observe which registers of valuation were used by different actors, but also which moral/discursive and material infrastructures are actualized in this situation. It will therefore be essential not only to identify the registers, but also to look at the “regimes of valuation” (Fochler et al. 2016), i.e. to pay attention to the infrastructures that can be used as resources. At the same time, it is essential not to treat such moments of valuation as isolated events, but to carefully consider “the interconnectedness of moments across situations and social fields” (Waibel et al., 2021).

This paper aims to analyse the revival of nuclear energy after a period of (planned) phase-out in a considerable number of European countries from the perspective of valuation studies, focusing on three instances and particular contexts where revaluation of nuclear energy is taking place (Antal et al., 2015) and considering their interconnected­ness. This analysis is situated in the wider research of the ERC grant “Innovation residues – Modes and infrastructures of caring for our longue-durée environmental futures” (http://www.innovation-reidues.eu). It will specifically examine the regimes of revaluation of nuclear energy, paying attention to how nuclear residues and the long-term nature of these commitments are (not) taken into account in these valuations often aiming at rather more short term goals.

The analysis will take the reader to three rather different important sites/moments where revaluing of nuclear energy takes place.

The paper will start by exploring the European Taxonomy Regulation[2](2020)which defines the conditions an economic activity has to meet in order to qualify as environmentally sustainable. The inclusion of nuclear energy in the taxonomy faced considerable debate and produced frictions due to differing perspectives on its environmental impact and sustainability.Putting the focus on nuclear energy, it will be essential to investigate the valuation practices in the context of the background report produced by the Joint Research Center[3], the Commission proposal as well as in the discussions at the European Parliament.

The second site will be the Nuclear Energy Summit (2024) which is well documents and is the most recent high level policy event which is meant to revalue the European energy policy when it comes to the nuclear. Here it will be relevant to see the network of actors, the regimes of valuation they navigate and how the change in direction from phasing out to reinforcing the nuclear is reasoned as unavoidable if the goal of “net zero” is to be achieved.

The third site is a national context, Ireland. Ireland is interesting as it has a legislative ban on generating nuclear energy in place since 1999; yet, currently the issue of nuclear energy more and more often is addressed. Not only enormous expansion of the data industry has put a serious strain on the energy sector, but also the net zero aims are far from reachable. Therefore, it is interesting to observe shifts in the registers of valuations with regard to nuclear power. Media, for example, cite the co-founder of a lobby group 18for0 (which means 18% nuclear energy to reach the net zero goals), Sarah Cullen, stressing that she feels that “the hard-line environmental stance of the anti-nuclear stance is outdated, and it’s a remnant of a different debate.” Nuclear energy is then described as not an “ideal technology”, but that Ireland has “a massive problem now”, referring to climate change.[4] In the Irish case it will be interesting to observe how it is possible to pursue and maintain conflicting performance ideals (increase the data industry and reach the climate goals) at the political level and what regimes of valuation emerge in such a situation of friction.

Taking the three cases together, will allow a comparative gaze across very different sites and constellations, considering their interconnectedness. It will show convergences and frictions in/between registers and regimes of valuation. The paper will pay specific attention to the different temporalities at work in this debate on reinvesting into nuclear energy. It shows different future making strategies (Doganova and Kornberger, 2021) with different temporal stretches – the long-term commitments due to nuclear residues while staging the nuclear as a relatively shorter-term solution to environmental problems.

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/speech_24_1624

[2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32020R0852

[3] https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC125953

[4] https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/could-going-nuclear-help-ireland-achieve-its-climate-targets-1199834.html; Ireland is not a unique case where environmental NGOs start to think aloud about a relaunch of nuclear energy as an option.

Foto von Mick Truyts auf Unsplash