8. Conclusion
In the preceding, a historical case for the promotion of two interconnected arguments – one theoretical and one empirical – has been presented. The first argument regards issues, publics and imaginaries as a nexus for energy policy, while the latter concerns the dominant role of economic growth in the articulation of energy imaginaries. A recurring pattern in the story is the emergence of issues, which publics respond to by means of articulation of these issues and imaginaries of how to deal with them. In this sense, energy policy can be seen as a battle of imaginaries, where environmentalists have achieved some significant victories over the years, yet have never been able to seriously challenge the dominance of economic growth over the imaginary space of energy system futures. The answer to the research question proposed in the introduction is that macroeconomic energy modelling has been developed as an instrument for energy policy in Denmark as a result of a traditionalist public responding to energy issues in the need for imaginaries of the future energy system. Gradually, some of the concerns of another public – the environmentalists – entered the traditionalist policy agenda, which led to an expansion of modelling capabilities in relation to environmental detail. Ever since the early 1970s, economic growth has played a key role in the energy imaginaries by being incorporated as a basic precondition provided by the Danish Ministry of Finance. The lesson to learn from it all is that macroeconomic modelling can be used as a powerful articulator of issues and imaginaries, and is, hence, to be understood as an effective instrument for constructing the realities confronting governmental decision-makers and the wider public. Thus, if someone wishes to change the world of economic policy, changing the models and the imaginaries they articulate might be a good place to start.
