The evolving Brazilian automotive-energy infrastructure: Entanglements of national developmentalism, sugar and ethanol production, automobility and gasoline

This paper addresses the dynamic sociotechnical construction of automotive-energy infrastructures, based on the case of ethanol fuel in Brazil in the 20th and early 21st centuries. Energy infrastructure projects are afforded but also constrained by technical and institutional “residues” of previous initiatives and achievements. The notion of “knots” is introduced to explore how sociotechnical entanglements interlinking elements from distinct levels of the societal fabric become stabilized and shape subsequent developments. This extension of the sociotechnical approach is shown to be fruitful to better understand the embedding of ethanol fuel in the process of evolution of the automotive-energy infrastructure in Brazil during the 20th century. This then offers building blocks for analysis and design of energy infrastructures in general.