1. A View from the Bottom up: Local Government and Sustainable Energy Transitions
Caroline Kuzemko, Assistant Professor,
PAIS, University of Warwick
Energy Research & Social Sciences Conference 2017
Sitges, Catalonia

2. Municipal Energy & International Political Economy
ESRC funded research project: ‘Local Energy Governance & Sustainability’ (LEGS):
Establish framework to explore, explain and better understand the roles of local government in sustainable energy
When seeking to explain the politics of sustainable transitions tend to apply insights from political science
But, what happens when we try to reflect back on IPE from transitions and local energy scholarship?

3. IPE and Change
Change = problem identified, current systems unable to solve, solutions found and implemented
About contestations and reconstitutions
1980s-early 2000s:
Contesting role of the state (economic management)
Direction of reconstitutions: market liberal institutions (privatisation & liberalisation); globalisation; TNCs
Post 2008: contestations of markets, little change – partly because of a lack of legitimate new ideas to underpin reconstitutions
But arguably too focused on policy, political systems and the politics of economics…

4. Sustainable Energy, Politics & Change
Be more specific about how energy systems relate to politics:
Critique within IPE/Crouch 2005; Keohane 2009; Doring 2017
Energy subsumed within broader political institutions (one way)
Energy systems influence political institutions:
Oil price shocks and economic crisis
Energy as ‘strategic’ and not subject to liberalisation (BRICS)
Climate change/transitions: contestation of fossil fuel capitalism/market rules
Spatial aspects of infrastructure and technological change:
Fossil fuels fixed and finite = geopolitical issues/access but renewables: more flexible/accessible (but weather important)
Decentralised electricty requires less centralised governance systems?
i.e. energy systems can’t change until governance drives that change… (one way)
Keynesian economics and centralised, national electricity system; limited response to transition due to market liberal ideas
Gavin Bridge; Mike Bradshaw; Richard Cowell… material and institutional – beyond ideas, institutions and interests

5. Municipal (sub-national) as a Site of Contestation
IPE/Public policy: again, tendency to interpret local government as a ‘taker’ of (trans-)national rules and as constrained by them
“…understanding transitions… requires a grasp of the spatial dimensions of change” (Bridge et al 2013)
Conceptually: city as site for learning and experimentation; local politics and spatial proximity; participation; positioned between national and community; balance supply and demand locally
Municipal energy contestations:
Re-entry of (local) state mini reversals of privatisation/TNCs
In some instances seek to drive agenda, and include equity and justice
Renewables (& ICT) underpin new capacities for municipals in energy
Stockholm and Malmo contest Swedish government re: buildings efficiency
This is why devolutions so interesting in UK

6. Bringing it Together
Concepts of energy and local tells IPE scholars something new about the nature of change
There are some new ideas driving political decisions
Change in energy systems driving some political reconsitutions
Need to understand more about the:
Two way relationships between political institutions & energy systems
Two way relationships between local authorities and national government
Local political economy given local authorities as actors in their own right (Beveridge & Neumann 2009)