Imagining Decarbonised Futures: A Novel Integrative Methodological Framework

Net-zero commitments have become the dominant instrument of climate and energy governance. Hence, energy transitions are increasingly shaped by state-authored visions that project, stabilise, and legitimise visions of the future. Energy social science has developed rich discursive approaches to study conflicts around energy systems, infrastructures, and projects. However, it has paid comparatively less attention to two elements. The first is studying how comprehensive net-zero policy visions are constructed upstream – that is, before implementation and contestation unfold. The second is to combine different qualitative methods to address a single phenomenon. This paper addresses both gaps. It analyses net-zero governance as a formative site of political and symbolic work, where ecological limits, economic priorities, and technological assumptions are assembled into a coherent vision of transformation. The paper introduces an integrative qualitative framework for energy research. It combines discourse analysis, rhetorical analysis, and LLM-assisted interpretation. It shows its applicability using the Spanish government’s net zero policy commitments and their parliamentary contestations as a case study. The analysis shows that Spain’s net-zero governance operates through a politics of managed consensus, in which layered discourses and rhetorical performances absorb contestation while deferring to the future the more radical implications of ecological limits. The paper also responds to calls for methodological pluralism in energy research by demonstrating it in practice. Beyond the case study, the findings help explain why net-zero governance in Europe, while designed to build consensus, may itself generate the conditions for backlash.