The energy transition represents one of the most significant and largest sociotechnical projects of our time. The future of the energy transition is shaped and negotiated through and with scientific models. One of the challenges this poses for society, politics, and science is reconciling scientific findings with their implementation by policy makers as well as with the needs and capabilities of the individual communities where the transformation is taking place. Therefore, it is important not only to question the process of translating models into social discourses but also to reflect on the process of modeling itself and establish it also as a participatory process of communication and learning.

The “Poetics of Models” project addresses the process of modeling in the context of the energy transition as a society-wide endeavor and examines how models are created, what assumptions and framework conditions they are based on, and how the modeling process can be designed from the outset so that the participation of various stakeholders is an inherent part of the modeling process. To this end, the project will test, discuss, and reflect scientific energy transition models in various real-world laboratories at KIT. The goal is not only to ensure the acceptance and interpretability of the models but also to integrate their applicability in diverse communities into the modeling process itself. With the help of experiments in real-world laboratories, models and the modeling process are to be reimagined. The project investigates how various stakeholders can and should be involved in the modeling process, how scientific models relate (or should relate) to narratives in politics, business, and civil society, and how models can be made open to aesthetic reflection.

An interdisciplinary team is addressing this challenge by bringing together expertise and skills from the fields of computer science, the humanities and social sciences, as well as transdisciplinary sustainability research. The goal of this collaboration is to use aesthetic theory to uncover the mechanisms of model-building and to identify the narrative patterns and framework conditions for the emergence of narratives contained in energy transition models. The models will then be tested and evaluated in real-world laboratories in order to ultimately better harness the potential of modeling practices for shaping the energy transition. At the same time, the project aims to contribute to reflecting on and establishing real-world laboratories as part of complex research infrastructures in the context of modeling.

The project is funded under the Reinhardt Koselleck Program of the German Research Foundation (DFG).

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