Energy research and energy-related policy making are informed by terms, ideas and stories that reproduce certain ways of thinking about problems and responses. As in other fields, phrases enter common usage, concepts become taken for granted, and shared vocabularies form. Disciplines and approaches build on these foundations, often forgetting that what seems like obvious, or common wisdom has a history: it is not set in stone nor is it uncontested or uncontroversial. The essays included in this collection explore different aspects of what we refer to as ‘fables’ in the energy world.