Why support for net-zero technologies can be politically vulnerable: Evidence from Celtic Sea floating offshore wind

Abstract

Support for net-zero technologies can be broad yet remain politically vulnerable. Actors may converge on the same technology through distinct problem diagnoses without forming a resilient coalition. This Perspectives article examines this proposition through Celtic Sea floating offshore wind (FLOW), a less mature and more expensive technology than fixed-foundation offshore wind. It draws on 68 interviews conducted primarily in 2024 with actors involved in or adjacent to FLOW development. Because opponents and affected publics were not interviewed, the interview material provides an ex-ante baseline rather than a reconstruction of contestation. This baseline is interpreted retrospectively through Hajer's discourse-coalition framework, supported by Ford and Newell's account of regime accommodation and Jasanoff and Kim's socio-technical imaginaries. The analysis identifies four problems for which FLOW was presented as an appropriate response: limitations of existing technologies and deployment geographies in delivering net-zero electricity at scale; vulnerability arising from fossil-fuel dependence and geographic concentration; industrial decline and uneven regional development; and the risk of losing commercial position in an emerging global market. Although these diagnoses differed, each made FLOW appear appropriate, creating an emerging FLOW-supportive discursive alignment rather than a consolidated discourse coalition. This discursive breadth created political flexibility, but not automatic resilience. Read ex post, the alignment appears vulnerable where storylines remain weakly institutionalised or promised regional and industrial benefits fail to materialise. By distinguishing discursive breadth from political resilience, the paper explains why support for costly emerging transition technologies can appear broad before contestation yet remain vulnerable as political conditions harden.