For years, technological innovations have been the cause of controversy. In reaction to this, increasingly often the bodies responsible for implementing these innovations undertake social dialogue with stakeholders. An important environment for this is media discourse, which defines the problems and key actors and disseminates strategies for argumentation. Effective communication on public policies is one of the challenges in deliberative democracy. This paper aims to analyse the role of experts and knowledge in reference to the models of public communication on shale gas. Using a qualitative press analysis, an incoherence was observed in the understanding of knowledge and the profile of experts and the models of communication using them. The communication, which is rather oriented towards persuasion without legitimisation of scientific factual knowledge, fails. Reference in the discourse to the unknown or uncertain directs attention to the issues related to the strategic exploitation of nonknowledge.

The aim of the article is to discuss the unintended consequences of energy efficiency, in the context of defuturization, by addressing the phenomenon of the rebound effect. The energy discourse is presented as ideological discourse protecting the status quo, even if it contemplates alternatives solutions. The interpretation of energy efficiency in the light of the Luhmannian concept of temporal structures in the modern society is proposed, and two types of expert narratives on the rebound effect are outlined: the mechanistic rebound effect and the systemic Jevons paradox. Finally, we explain why none of them are noticeably reflected in public discourse on energy policy and are limited to the scientific milieu.