ARTICLE IN PRESS

Energy Policy 38 (2010) 26172623

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Energy Policy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol

Trust and the transformation of energy systems

Steve Rayner
James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization, Said Business School, Park End Street, Oxford, OX1 1HP, United Kingdom

a r t i c l e in fo abstract

Available online 21 June 2009 The author looks at diverse concepts and roles of trust in the challenge of decarbonising energy systems,
Keywords: drawing on 25 years of personal experience in the elds of energy and environmental policy research.
Trust The paper focuses on three issues-public trust in science, institutional trust in making technology
Energy choices, and the idea that high-trust societies are more sustainable than those exhibiting low-trust.
Transformation While trust is a key concept in understanding the public acceptability of technology choices, it is only
one of a suite of interrelated concepts that must be addressed, which also includes liability, consent, and
fairness. Furthermore, rational distrust among competing institutional world views may be critical in
understanding the role of social capital in socioeconomic and technological development. Thus the
concept of trust has become a portmanteau, carrying a diverse range of ideas and conditions for
sustainable energy systems. The paper concludes with three emphases for decision makers. First, the
issue is the energy system, not particular generating technologies. Second, the energy system must be
recognized to be as much a social system as it is a technical one. Third, the system requires
incorporation of the minimum level of diversity of engineering technologies and social actors to be
sustainable.
& 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction of trust in creating a social environment conducive to technolo-

The problem posed by this symposium is one of political
mobilization around climate change and energy policy. The issue
has been framed for us as one of managing public expectations
and marshalling public and political support behind an agenda
of decarbonisation of the UK energy system while maintaining
energy security, promoting economic competitiveness, and
eliminating fuel poverty. In other words, the goal of such a
mobilization would be a socially and environmentally sustainable
energy strategy.
From a critical social science perspective, we could have a lot of
fun unpacking the assumptions underlying this framing of the
problem and dissecting the scientic, ethical, and cultural
assumptions, interpretations, and commitments that it takes for
granted. Indeed, I have done so at length elsewhere (Rayner, 1991,
1995a, 1995b, 2000; Thompson and Rayner, 1998; Rayner and
Malone, 1998; Verweij et al., 2006). However, for the purposes of
the present discussion I will conne myself to the problem as it is
offered to us by the organizers. In my remarks I shall look back on
two and a half decades of my own journey through social and
institutional aspects of risk, energy, and sustainable development
issues to provide a somewhat personal focus on the potential role
E-mail addresses: steve.rayner@said-business-school.oxford.ac.uk,
steve.rayner@sbs.ox.ac.uk (S. Rayner).
gical change including
 political consensus around the need/desirability of signi-
cant systemic change (including issues of trust in science,
particularly climate science).
 public and industry acceptance of new grid supply techno-
logies (packages of preferences for trust, liability and con-
sentTLC factors).
 interaction among diverse institutional actors (social capital
and the notion of generalized trust as the social context for
decision making).
In the course of this discussion, following the path breaking
work of Bernard Barber (1983), I will touch on several different
meanings of trust including
 credibilitythe truth value that people assign to claims made
by various actors.
 condence in technical competenceexpectations of the
ability of actors to perform within elds of claimed expertise.
 recognition of integrity/duciary responsibilitythe honesty,
decency and fastidiousness of actors in performing roles and
duties.
 meeting expectations of behaviour (good and bad)reliability
of the behaviour of institutions and individuals, both positive
and negative.

0301-4215/$ - see front matter & 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2009.05.035
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
2618 S. Rayner / Energy Policy 38 (2010) 26172623
 deference to authoritiesthe extent to which claims to
specialist expertise are subject to public scrutiny and critique.
The speakers brief for the symposium acknowledges that the
interests of the various stakeholders probably do not coincide at
the outset and may or may not converge later. I will question
whether the framing of the problem as one of diverging interests is
sufcient to inform effective policy making and will suggest that
the issue is characterized by more far-reaching divergences in
world views, even among those who do not dispute the urgency of
climate policies.
I will go on to suggest that while trust is a key concept in
understanding the public acceptability of technology choices, it is
only one of a suite of interrelated concepts that must be
addressed. However, I will also question the central role accorded
to trust in accounts of the importance of social capital for
economic, social and technological development.
2. Trust in science: is there a crisis of credibility?
At the beginning of this decade there appears to have been a
widespread perception at the highest levels that there exists a
crisis of condence in science and technology in the UK. This was
clearly highlighted in the prime ministers 2002 speech to the
Royal Society in which he unfavourably contrasted the climate for
biotechnology research in the UK with that of India (Blair, 2002);
and building a positive climate for science and technology
remains a preoccupation of the Ofce of Science and Innovation
within the Department of Trade and Industry. However, the
existence of such a crisis has not been reected in successive
public opinion polls which show, inter alia, that 7080% public
agrees with positive statements about science and 85% agree that
Scientists and engineers make a valuable contribution to
society. By the way, condence in civil servants lies in middle
of the professions ranked, cabinet ministers were at the bottom
(Ofce of Science and Technology Welcome Trust, 2000; MORI,
2002; MORI/OST, 2005).
So if there is not evidence of a widespread crisis of condence
in science, we might ask, Is there a problem of trust in
governance?. Political scientists in North America and the UK
claim to have detected a steady 50 year trend of declining
deference to authority in general, including politicians, doctors,
academics, etc. (Laird, 1989; Giddens, 1991; Beck, 1992; Nevitte,
1996; ONeil, 2002). It is possible that scientists, who came to
occupy a position of unparalleled inuence and respect arising out
of their contribution to winning the Second World War, may
wrongly conate their experience of this loss of deference to
persons of authority with lack of condence in science as an
activity that contributes to the public good.
One poll result, often highlighted as a source of concern, is that
which indicates that the public has higher trust in scientists
working for NGOs than those in government (Ofce of Science and
Technology Welcome Trust, 2000). Industry scientists, although
presumably having the most experience with many products and
technologies are trusted the least. However, these are not really
judgments of the technical competence of these individuals, but
realistic reections of the expected behaviour of the institutions in
which they work. Take away the word scientists and we nd
that people generally trust NGOs to be less secretive than
governmentswho must balance a range of competing interests
and responsibilitiesand are aware that rms will protect their
own intellectual property and their market positions.
This is not to say that all is rosy in the republic of science.
There are public concerns: 3545% say that science and
technology is developing too fast, 5575% are concerned that
scientists may ignore risks (Ofce of Science and Technology
Welcome Trust, 2000). However, in terms of the incomplete
typology of trust that I offered above, we would say that these are
issues of the responsibility of scientists, rather than their
credibility.
More damaging to the credibility of scientists is their treat-
ment of dissidents. Work conducted under the auspices of the
ESRC Science in Society Programme (2007) revealed an instruc-
tive contrast between the treatment of dissident scientists in
Scandinavia and the Anglo-Saxon world. Scandinavian scientic
institutions absorb, that is to say, surround and smother their
dissidents. Anglo-Saxon scientic institutions publicly eject and
disown dissidents, as clearly demonstrated by the cases of Pusztai
and Wakeeld in the GM potatoes and MMR controversies. This
public ejection raises questions in the publics mind about who is
trying to hide what. In these cases distrust in both integrity and
technical competence of scientists and their institutions comes to
the fore, especially in context of declining deference.
What I have elsewhere termed the novelty trap is another
source of distrust in the governance of science, especially in
relation to policy and the economy (Rayner, 2004). New
technologies are often heralded with strong claims about their
novelty and the benets that they will bring. But when queries are
raised about whether new technology entails new risks, their
champions frequently back-pedal. Fifty years ago, Lewis Strauss,
Chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission claimed that
nuclear power would yield electricity that would be too cheap to
meter (Strauss, 1954). Three decades later, amid concerns about
the safety of light water reactors, nuclear engineers were often
heard to claim that they were just another way of boiling water.
The public was told that that GM Crops would end hunger in the
third world (Royal Society of London et al., 2000), but when
concerns were expressed about their environmental, human-
health, and socioeconomic implications biotechnologists told us
that they are just an extension of traditional plant breeding. More
recently, nanotechnology was hailed as the next big thing, but
again concerns about health and environmental issues were met
with the claim that it is just an extension of colloidal chemistry
(Thomas and Kulkarni, 2003). Such U-turns are clearly damaging
to scientic credibility (Rayner, 2004).
One understands that claims of novelty attract public and
private investment, create excitement for researchers, and aid
recruitment to university departments. However, they also invite
critical public scrutiny and create the danger of stigmatisation.
From the standpoint of the scientic community, concerns
about new technologies often seem to be exaggerated. The decit
model of public understanding was advanced as an explanation.
Although it is now generally proclaimed to be dead, this is only
the case at the rhetorical level. It is alive and well in the practice of
many scientic, commercial, and government organizations. It has
actually has gone through three iterations, all of which are
currently in play.
Version I frames the decit as a lack of understanding of
scientic facts on the part of the public. It suggests that the media,
consumers, and publics express opposition to new technologies
because they do not have the appropriate scientic knowledge to
understand the benets and risks involved (Gross, 1994). The
solution to opposition, therefore, is public scientic education
to assuage concerns so that people would cease to question
the value and the management of the technology. If only the
public understood the facts, then they would love us and leave us
alone.
By the end of the last decade, this version of the decit model
had largely fallen from favour, at least at the rhetorical level.
Almost everyone involved in negotiating the interface between
science and the public now acknowledges that communication is
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S. Rayner / Energy Policy 38 (2010) 26172623
a two-way process. As former Science Minister Lord Sainsbury
said:
We have moved decisively away from the era in which it was
enough for science communicators simply to educate the
public about science and its benets. What is needed now is an
effective two-way dialogue and debate between those who do
scientic research and the public (OST, 2002).
There is explicit agreement that scientists and science policy
makers need also to listen to the public and seek to understand
and respond to their concerns. However, for the most part, the
reality of practice in science communication has yet to catch up
with this rhetorical change. Promoters of new technologies
continue to confront public concern by providing reassuring
information about the technology.
Version II suggests that the public does not so much lack
knowledge of facts but understanding of scientic procedures and
the limits to scientic inquiry. It suggests that the problem is not
simply lack of scientic information about particular technologies,
but a failure of public understanding of the processes of science
(Wynne, 1991). It is not possible, for instance, for science to prove
a negative proposition, e.g. there is no risk attached to a particular
activity or technology. If this version of the decit model were
correct, it would predict that the public demands or expects zero-
risk. However, in two decades of research on public behaviour
with respect to technological and environmental risk, I have never
encountered a zero-risk expectation among the public.
Decit model III suggests that neither knowledge nor under-
standing is at issue. The problem is rather a decit of public trust
in science and its institutions (Haerlin and Parr, 1999; Select
Committee on Science and Technology, 2000). The informational
focus of science communication is now supplemented by a trust-
building imperative. If only the public trusted us then they would
love us and leave us alone.
Each of these versions of the decit model reiterates the fact
that effective communication about science is an important and
valuable activity for scientists, government, industry, and NGOs.
Certainly, in the 21st century, every citizen would benet from
what the ESRC Science in Society Research Programme has
described as a capacity of popular connoisseurship of the
potentialities and limitations of science and technology (Healey,
2004).
However, framing the relationship between science and
governance primarily as a problem of science communication
domesticates it as a process problem that can be solved by the
application of better communication techniques. When the
proposed solution remains constant through successive problem
redenitions there may be good reason to be suspicious. The goal
of such communication often seems to be to preserve the
autonomy of scienceTrust us and leave us to get on with it.
Decit models enable the institutions of science and governance
to elide fundamental structural challenges to established patterns
of institutional authority in both science and politics. If the issue
is one of communication, there is no need to question the
appropriateness of existing procedures, established patterns of
access to decision making, institutional prerogatives, and power
distributions.
The decit-communication paradigm does not raise contro-
versial questions about the relative roles of scientic advice and
moral and aesthetic judgement in the policy process. By not doing
so, it allows the scientic community to sidestep emerging
challenges to its own institutional autonomy and authority as
well as the close relationship to political power that it has enjoyed
during much of the 20th century.
2619
Critique of the decit model throws into relief the way in
which scientic and political authority have become inextricable
during the past half-century. Policy makers rely on scientists
(as they once relied on priesthoods) both to interpret the world
and to be agents of human control over dangerous forces such as
disease or natural disaster. Science is not simply one activity or
aspect of society, but has become its primary culture of
legitimation. There is a strong assumption on both sides of the
science and policy relationship that science compels (or ought to
compel) policy. Just get the science right and if we then trust the
science we will trust the policies. Indeed, since World War II there
has been an explosion in the growth of policy-maker reliance on
scientic assessments (often based on computer models).
3. Trust in climate sciencehow important is it for policy?
But, does science drive policy? Contrasting the inuence of
climate change models and assessments on policy in the USA and
Europe strongly suggests otherwise. Debates over climate change
are multidimensional, and are often framed in terms of trust in
science, both with respect to reliability of scientic claims and the
motivations of the claimants. But, as Roger Pielke Jr (2005) points
out; there is invariably much room for disagreement over
appropriate policy response, even where consensus on science
exists. The reality is that politics matters.
George Bush senior began his campaign for the US Presidency
in 1988, when the country was facing its worst drought and heat
wave since records began. He famously told the electorate You
have heard about the greenhouse effect: Wait until you see the
White House effect (New York Times, 1989). However, shortly
after taking ofce, he blamed his failure to deliver on the
ambiguity in the science of global warming. In language evocative
of an inverted bell-curve he suggested that scientists were sharply
divided between those who believed in climate change and those
who did not. With such a lack of scientic consensus, claimed the
President, sound policy making was impossible. Although this
argument fundamentally misrepresented informed scientic
opinion, his stance framed subsequent policy debate as between
those who trusted in climate science and climate sceptics, who
found aws in its evidence and reasoning.
Policy making in the USA is also very much dominated by what
we might call the proportionality principle, which suggests that
policies must be proportional in their costs to the damages that
they are designed to avoid. Hence, there is a legal requirement for
regulatory impact analysis (benet-cost analysis) of Federal
legislation. We should also recognize that for the past 30 years,
the US has been undergoing a process of devolution of power from
the Federal Government back to the States. There is also a
pervasive concern about the state of the American economy and
its ability to support the American way of life which George
Bush Jr has famously declared will not be sacriced on the altar of
climate change. In other words, the economy is viewed as fragile
while nature remains robust.
In Europe, by way of contrast, the most prominent leader of the
1980s, Margaret Thatcher, emerged as a veritable Green Goddess
of the environment. Her desire to destroy the power of the miners
and the dash for gas were both consistent with recognizing
climate change as a serious threat.
The precautionary principle, rather than the proportionality
principle, informs policy thinking in Europe (ORiordan and Jaeger,
1996). The imperative to avoid irreversible change outweighs the
insistence that action only be taken where the costs of doing
nothing can be shown to outweigh those of intervention.
Furthermore, the past three decades has been a period in
which Europe has moved inexorably in the direction of greater
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2620 S. Rayner / Energy Policy 38 (2010) 26172623
integration and harmonization of policies and procedures among
its constituent nation states. A non-human external threat to the
health and safety of citizens is quite consistent with the expansion
and development of the greater European project. Climate has
provided a unifying focus for European politics, especially in the
face of apparent US unwillingness to consider meaningful climate
change policies.
Finally, perhaps ironically in a part of the world in which no
wild nature exists, Europeans seem to be more sympathetic than
Americans to the idea that there are limits to the natural capacity
of ecosystems to withstand change. Hence nature is viewed as
fragile and economy as comparatively robust.
Public expectations of the government also differ on each side
of the Atlantic. In the US, about 6070% of respondents to opinion
polls say that they see climate as a signicant problem, but only
about 40% look to the Federal Government to do anything about it
(Pew Research Center, 2006). Increasingly state and city govern-
ments and the philanthropic and private sectors are seen as
playing a larger role.
More Britons (7090%) than Americans tell pollsters that they
view climate change as a signicant problem. However, almost all
of them also see the Her Majestys Government as having the
primary responsibility to come up with and implement solutions
(MORI, 2002).
Among institutions addressing climate change worldwide, the
Intergovernmental Panel, on Climate Change (IPCC) has achieved a
high level of trust among diverse constituencies worldwide.
Although it has been subject to some cynical criticism (e.g.,
Boehmer-Christiansen, 1994) attempts to blacken its reputation
through accusations that the summary for policymakers (SPM)
has politicized the ndings of the individual working groups
(e.g., Singer, 1997) have only impressed a minority of climate
naysayers, who are themselves vulnerable to accusations of
political selectivity with regard to the relevant science.
Trust in the IPCC seems to encompass most of the dimensions
that I referred to in my opening remarks. Its reports enjoy high
credibility due to recognition of the technical competence of the
scientists who make up the IPCC. Its integrity is assured through a
highly visible series of procedures by which individual govern-
ments nominate scientists, drafts are prepared and peer reviewed
before being submitted to government review and line-by-line
approval of its reports is given in plenary sessions. Furthermore,
the IPCC has demonstrated admirable consistency in its ndings,
cautiously moving over the best part of two decades, from a highly
conservative initial nding that it could nd no scientic basis to
reject the anthropogenic warming hypothesis to a carefully
drafted consensus that climate change is actually occurring an is
to a signicant extent due to human activity. At the same time, the
IPCC has not endorsed extreme scenarios or ideas for which the
evidence is contentious, including the currently popular idea that
increased hurricane damage costs in the Caribbean and North
America are a direct result of a secular global warming trend.
This last point brings me to the topic of the damage to public
trust that can result from the employment of bad arguments in
favour of good causes. For instance, Bill McGuire (2006), writing in
New Scientist has even sought to blame recent volcanic activity on
climate change! Less outlandishly, there were several press
reports in which well-respected members of the scientic esta-
blishment endorsed the idea that the damage caused by Katrina,
and other hurricane events was due to increased intensity of
storms resulting from warming of the oceans due to anthropo-
genic climatic change.
However, research by Pielke et al. (2005) shows that the idea
that storms have consistently increased in intensity of the past
century may not be justied. In any case, they conclusively show
that over 85% of the increased damage costs of wind and water
damage in recent hurricanes is directly attributable to increased
density of costly infrastructure (condos, luxury hotels, etc.) in
oodplains and on coastal margins.
The public reaction to the Asian tsunami demonstrated (if any
such demonstration were needed) that the public and politicians
do respond to disaster events. It is easy to understand therefore
the temptation to blame increased hurricane damage on climate
change. However, public credibility is easily undermined and,
once shaken, almost impossible to mend. Scientists and politi-
cians concerned to advance a climate policy agenda would do well
to refrain from such temptation, especially since there are
sufcient good arguments and strong evidence on which to base
a precautionary agenda. With that note, I move on to my second
theme; that of the role of trust in energy technology decisions.
4. The role of trust in technology choice: the cases of new
nuclear options and water conservation
The US Department of Energys Oak Ridge National Laboratory
launched its Nuclear Power Options Viability Study in 1984 to
explore the possible availability of advanced nuclear power
reactor concepts in the 20002010 timeframe (Trauger et al.,
1986). The project was overwhelmingly dominated by technical
assessments of alternative designs, mostly embodying so-called
passive safety features. However, I was invited to lead a social
science assessment of the issues most likely to inuence their
market and public acceptability, especially in the light of wide-
spread concerns about the safety of existing nuclear power
reactors.
This was a challenging task, not least because of the
implausibility of projecting existing electric power industry
structures, management and regulatory regimes, political prio-
rities, economic conditions and technical capabilities some 20
years into the future.
First, we took a broad view, interpreting technologies as social
systems mediated by materials and devices, in which we would
focus on the likely entailments of any central station nuclear
power generator, regardless of its particular characteristics.
Second, we approached risk as an ordinary language category.
That is to say, rather than anchoring on the technical concept of
probability times consequence, we sought to understand how
people actually used the term in everyday speech.
This soon revealed that ordinary folks talking about risk may
not be referring to probabilities of consequences at all. In
particular, we found that people used the term risk to refer to
concerns about what we came to call the TLC issues (Rayner and
Cantor, 1987). These are the issues of trust, liability, and consent
(see Table 1). Concerns about consent revolved around the
question of whether affected parties believed that they had been
given the opportunity to accept or reject the technology in a
manner that they regarded as legitimate. Issues of liability
focused on whether the affected parties were satised that costs
were appropriately distributed and that appropriate arrange-
ments were in place to make good in the event of unwanted
consequences.
Trust hinged on whether the affected parties were satised
that the institutions responsible for the commissioning, design,
implementation, management, and regulation of the technology
(including arrangements for consent and liability) were appro-
priate and adequate.
To asses the future acceptability of nuclear power designs we
focused on the approaches that electric utility companies,
regulators, and public-interest interveners took towards trust,
liability, and consent issues, thus dened, in the decision to add
new generating capacity.
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S. Rayner / Energy Policy 38 (2010) 26172623
With respect to consent, utilities viewed the demand for power
as a surrogate for consent to capacity addition. This is what social
scientists call a revealed preference approach, embodying the
idea that people vote with their pocket books and reveal their
preferences for trade offs through their behaviour in the market
(Thaler and Rosen, 1975). Of course, it is reasonable to question
how valid this view is in a situation of even regulated monopoly.
In Britain 20 years later, the availability of consumer choice
among suppliers, including specialist suppliers of renewable
energy, may make this competitive/market position appear all
the more reasonable.
Following John Rawls (1971), we characterized the regulators
approach to public consent as hypothetical. This reects the
idea that the social contract between citizens and government
permits agencies to assume consent to specic actions. This
hierarchical approach to consent is also consistent with a focus
on procedural rationality. In the case of US Public Utility
Commissions, power demand forecasts were often regarded as
the justication for the administrative determination that a new
power station could be built.
The public-interest interveners took a different approach to
consent, often arguing that the granting of a certicate of
convenience and necessity to build a new power station should
be made, or at least ratied, by popular referendum. In so doing,
they were demonstrating an explicit preference approach to
consent. Signicantly, commitment to explicit consent makes it
impossible to impose risks on future generations who, by
denition, are not available to give consent.
Looking at liability (see Calabrese, 1970), the utility companies
were committed to the idea of spreading risk as broadly as
possible away from the company itself. In other words, the cost of
the plant, both foreseen and unforeseen, should be transferred to
the customers. The utilities also campaigned for the preservation
of the Price-Anderson Act that limited liability of nuclear power
generators in the event of an accident.
Regulators, on the other hand, adopted a deep pocket approach
to costs, seeking to make a regulatory allocation of resources
where they would have least impact on societya so-called deep
pocket approach.
Interveners took the opposite view from that of the utilities,
seeking strict liability that concentrated responsibility for costs,
losses, and accidents in the hands of directors and shareholders of
utility companies. This position was clearly related to the issue of
trust insofar as it was explicitly seen as a way to keep the
bastards honest, by making them liable for failures. With respect
to trust as a specic variable, it was clear that the utilities trusted
good managers and successful rms. Track records say it all.
Consistent with their procedural approach to consent, regula-
tors demonstrated that they trust rules and processes, especially
those of longstanding effectiveness. Interveners, also consistent
with their approach to consent, trusted the collective wisdom of
the people.
The validity of what we came to call the Fairness Hypothesis
of technology acceptance has yet again been demonstrated in
relation to another controversial public utility service, the supply
of drinking water in Southern California. Here, in response to the
persistent shortage of supply, the Otay, San Juan Capistrano, and
Irvine Ranch Water Districts adopted a highly unusual conserva-
tion rate structure (Lach et al., 2006).
This system was devised with input from many stakeholders,
who agreed that the amounts of water they were expected to use
and resulting costs were fair. Indeed, the genius of this particular
solution is its explicit focus on focus on fairness. Proposals for
conservation water pricing have foundered elsewhere when
advanced solely on the basis of efciency. Furthermore, the
procedure for establishing the rate embodies three competing
2621
principles of equity, at least one of which can be seen to appeal to
each of the egalitarian, hierarchical, and competitive ways of
organizing to be found among the stakeholders. These are
principles of parity, proportionality, and priority (Young, 1993;
Rayner, 1995a).
First, each household is allocated the same xed allowance for
human consumption, i.e., for drinking, cooking, bathing, etc. thus
meeting the requirement of parity, which is in turn characteristic
of egalitarians, who view water as a basic need and human right
rather than as a commodity.
Each household then receives an additional variable allowance
for use outside the housemainly irrigation of lots. This
allowance is determined by a formula that includes the area of
each lot (obtained from real-estate records), the evapotranspira-
tion rates of typical plantings, and records of seasonal tempera-
tures. Thus the allowance varies by lot size and by month to allow
for efcient irrigation of gardens. Charts showing usage alongside
allocation have proven effective in correcting householders
tendency to over water their yards late in the growing season.
This second allowance satises hierarchical preferences for
proportionality in allocation.
Consumers wishing to consume in excess of these allowances
are, in principle, subject to an escalating scale of charges, the rate
rising more precipitously as consumption increases, although in
practice punitive levels of charging have seldom been reached.
However, this does allow for individualist householders to assert
their priority in allocation, should they choose to do so.
Individualists are also attracted by the market-like emphasis on
establishing prices and property rights.
Hence, egalitarians see a strong instrument that motivates
conservation as well as protects everyones access to sufcient
water for basic needs. Hierarchists appreciate the rationality of
the strategy and its ability to help in long term planning.
Individualists appreciate how the strategy protects the customers
freedom of choice to use as much water as can be afforded.
These cases of the role of trust and inextricable ideas of
fairness in shaping the acceptability of technological change in
energy and water naturally lead us to consider the idea of broader
societal trust, which is often associated with the idea of social
capital.
5. Trust as social contextthe idea of high-trust societies
The idea of high-trust societies and the notion that they are
better developed and governed than their low-trust counterparts
became a prominent theme of social science in the 1990s. It has
been a major feature of scholarly and popular works by such
luminaries as Francis Fukuyama (1995) and Harvard political
scientist Robert Putnam. In particular Putnam (1993) draws a
sharp contrast between performance of governance institutions in
Northern and Southern Italy. In seeking to explain this phenom-
enon, Putnam explores but rejects the obvious candidates such as
geography (closeness to northern Europe), state expenditures on
government functions (the national government actually transfers
wealth from North to South, education of ofcials (higher levels of
attainment in the South), and so forth. None of these is a
statistically signicant correlate of performance.
In fact, the only variable accounting for the difference is
presence of overlapping networks of voluntary organizations
characteristic of civil society, including sporting clubs, camera
clubs, etc. In fact, the correlation is so strong that it not only
accounts for the NorthSouth split, but also for the differential
rates of performance among provinces within both regions.
Furthermore, Putnam makes a cogent case that civic voluntarism
historically precedes economic development and not vice versa, as
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2622 S. Rayner / Energy Policy 38 (2010) 26172623
Table 1
Different kinds of institutions exhibit consistent preferences/expectations.
Consent
Utilities (competitive) Revealed preferences (demand)
Regulatory (hierarchical) Hypothetical (forecast need for power)
Interveners (egalitarian) Explicit (popular referendum)
would be assumed by much development theory of the past half-
century.
Putnam and Fukuyama seem to agree that the presence of
multiple overlapping social networks create the conditions for
generalized social trust leading to good governance. The phenom-
enon seems indisputable, but is the idea of generalized trust
adequate to explain the observations here?
My own view (Rayner and Malone, 2000) is that Putnam does
not articulate a sufciently clear theory of trust and how it works
for us to be able to test his explanation. He does not recognize and,
therefore, does not account for the different forms and foci of trust
discussed above. Furthermore, it is a somewhat romantic notion
to suppose that face-to-face communities are necessarily high-
trust. History and anthropology are full of examples in which
small egalitarian communities generate scapegoating and witch
hunts, for example, colonial Salem (Owen, 1982), or post-war
Papua New Guinea (Burridge, 1969). As exemplied by the
persecution of a highly assimilated Jewish community in Nazi
Germany or the ethnic cleansing of the former Jugoslavia, frequent
face-to-face association is no obstacle to demonization. Finally, a
robust civil society must surely function precisely where trust is
tenuous. One that relies solely on condence and goodwill seems
fragile indeed. A sound theory of good governance must surely
recognize the positive role of rational distrust.
This suggests another explanation for the success of Northern
Italy that is wholly compatible with Putnams observations. That
is that the north was institutionally more diverse and therefore
has enjoyed a greater capacity for complex strategy switching.
Since the 12th Century, when the Kingdom of Roger the Great was
a ourishing trading center governed by a unique combination of
Byzantine bureaucracy and Norman feudalism, the South of Italy
has been dominated by hierarchy and (mercantile) competition. It
never developed the third mode of social organization character-
istic of Northern Italy; that of the self governing communes, rooted
in the mediaeval system of guilds. With only two models of social
organization, the South, at best, could only oscillate, but not
develop. However, the presence of a third paradigm or model
provided the North with the capacity to experiment with of
complex combinations of strategies to suit changing political,
economic, and environmental conditions.
This explanation of the Italian case suggests a theory of
sustainability as the capacity for strategy switching. Such a theory
could be applied at all levels of social organization from whole
societies or regions of societies, to individual technologies, such as
energy systems.
Sustainable development as strategy switching seems to
require at least three things:
 Availability of at least three alternative organizational strategies.
 Experience with changing strategies, so that change is not too
daunting, and
 Dynamic tension between strategies that does not allow any
strategy to be excluded.
Indeed, the ability of the minimum set of three strategies to
check each others dysfunctional tendencies is a critical element
in this idea (see Table 2).
Liability Trust
Market risk spreading (insurance and customers) Good managers and successful rms
Deep pocket (institutional allocation) Rules and processes
Strict (shareholders and directors) Will of the people
Table 2
Role of rational distrust.
Checked Unchecked
Hierarchy System maintenance Complacency and corruption
Competition Innovation Monopoly and extortion
Egalitarianism Early warning Factional squabbling and paranoia
The minimum level of diversity is also an important contribu-
tion to surprise proong. Surprise is always relative to expecta-
tions. Hence, the incorporation of multiple perspectives reduces
opportunities to be surprised.
The idea that technological systems, like other social systems
need to observe a law of requisite variety also cautions us with
regard to the participatory turn in contemporary science
and technology policy (Verweij and Thompson, 2006). A new
emphasis on participation and discursive democracy may be
useful as a corrective to systems that have relied excessively on
collusion between hierarchy and competition (that is to say on
government and business). However, egalitarianism without
hierarchy and competition is no more capable of delivering the
sustainability goods than the old duopoly of power. None of
the ways of organizing should be permitted a veto.
6. Conclusions
More than 30 years have passed since Rodney Needham (1972)
drew our attention to the polythetic character of the idea of belief.
Needham was following a long train of 20th century thought that
can be found in Vygotskys (1962) analogy of category formation
as chains of resemblance, Ryle (1951) polymorphous classication,
Wittgenstein (1953) idea of family resemblances, and idea of
polytypic classication in modern microbiology.
In all of these systems of concept formation, items at one end
of a chain of objects which constitute a category need not have
any conditions in common with those at the other end. As
Wittgenstein wrote about the category of games, For if you look
at them you will not see something that is common to them all,
but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them
(1953:31e.66).
The category of games is an open concept in Wittgenstein. We
can recognise that games are a characteristic form of human
activity and it can be shown that games are similar sorts of things,
but no single essence or set of necessary and sufcient conditions
can be stated that covers al of the cases. Over 20 years have passed
since I suggested that the concept of risk is also a polyvalent
category in which ideas of trust, liability, and consent are as
central to the ordinary language denition of risk as those of
probability of occurrence and magnitude of loss. I think that
today, we have to treat the concept of trust in much the same way.
In addition to the closely related meanings of integrity and
technical competence articulated by Barber (1983), we see that
trust in the discourses of risk and governance signals a wide set
of concepts related to expectations of societal resilience as well as
interpersonal relationships. In the narrowest sense, trust is one
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
S. Rayner / Energy Policy 38 (2010) 26172623
key concept, alongside liability and consent, in the vital package of
TLC factors. However, in the broadest sense, the idea of trust
stands for the whole package. In the narrow sense, trust may not
be as important as Putnam and Fukuyama assert in their works on
socioeconomic development, nor as important as diversity and
pluralistic viewpoints. But in the widest sense as an ordinary
language category, trust may also stand for peoples expectations
of their society to deliver such development.
We may tend to think about energy systems in (literally)
concrete terms, as fuel systems, power stations, distribution grids
and technologies of consumption such as homes and appliances or
factories and machines. But ultimately, energy systems are
institutional systems mediated by materials and devices. Trust,
fairness and risk are institutional characteristics. Furthermore, as I
stated in the beginning of this paper, they are aspects of
fundamental world views, of individual and institutional iden-
tities not merely manifestations of interests.
The process of how we choose an energy future is, therefore, as
important to a socially, politically, economically, and environmen-
tally sustainable outcome as any technological option on the
table. What will be the mix of administrative determination
(through technical assessment and government action), market
outcomes (through the R&D and generating capacity decisions of
private rms), and public discourse (often conducted through
surrogates such as NGOs and the media)? Whatever process is
adopted to choose our energy future it must recognize several key
points.
First, the issue is the energy system, not particular generating
technologies. Second, that energy system must be recognized to
be as much a social system as it is a technical one. Third, the
system requires incorporation of the minimum level of diversity
of engineering technologies and social actors to be sustainable in
the way I have suggested. Following these precepts provides the
best chance that the process will lead to a social choice that will
be exible, resilient to surprise, and able benet from rational
distrust among diverse constituencies, all of which appear to be
necessary to attract broad social support.
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