Contested Energy Transitions: A Media Discourse Analysis on Transformation Processes in the SaarLorLux Border Region

Ever since the 1990s, in the wake of discussions about climate change and the urgent need for a low carbon society, far-reaching transformations have occurred in the European energy supply. These have been marked by prolonged media and societal negotiations around the expansion of renewable energies, and diverging attitudes towards coal and especially nuclear power, as well as hopes that hydrogen might prove a usable energy source. All of this has been intensified by the energy crisis and the Ukraine War. Focusing on the SaarLorLux region on the borders of Germany, France and Luxembourg, the article undertakes a comparative analysis of media coverage of energy issues in 2021 and 2022, using the discourse analysis developed by Laclau and Mouffe to highlight continuities and discontinuities. The media analysis shows the emergence of ‘contested energy transitions’. In 2022, massive problems in French nuclear power plants led to a noticeably more critical discussion of this technology in the Républicain Lorrain (France) than had been the case in 2021, but this may only have been a temporary blip in reporting. In the Saarbrücker Zeitung (Germany) and Luxemburger Wort (Luxembourg), deeply rooted criticism of nuclear power persisted over the two-year period of the study, reflecting a regional conflict that offers no easy solutions. Across the borders, nuclear energy became, therefore, in discourse theoretical terms, a ‘floating signifier.’ In 2022 all three regional newspapers—though on the French side rather less positively—presented the expansion of renewable energies as necessary in light of recent crises. An overarching hope lay in the promotion of hydrogen, which, however, was still seen to be at an early stage of development.