1. Tineke van der Schoor Kenniscentrum NoorderRuimte
Challenging obduracy: how local communities transform the energy system
Tineke van der Schoor Kenniscentrum NoorderRuimte
Introduction
The transition to a decentralized renewable energy system requires the transformation of communities. Increasingly, citizens become ‘prosumers’ and take energy production in their own hands.
Recently, many citizens pool their resources to start a local energy initiative.
In the Netherlands, for instance, more than 500 such local initiatives seek to reshape the energy system in the face of constraints embedded in technical, cultural, economic and political traditions.
In my research I investigate such constraints, or obduracies, which are both physical and political. The physical built environment resists change and brings along unsustainability due to the layout of buildings and infrastructures; the politically established way of centralized decision making resists the attempts of local initiatives to change the energy system.
Results
My analysis combines Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and Social Movement Theory (SMT), to allow a dynamic analysis of collective strategies.
First, ANT is mobilized to describe the local networks consisting of human actors as well as institutions, buildings, energy technologies and infrastructures. More specifically, I investigate the obduracy and scripts of the local environment to clarify how the local network both resists change and invites specific forms of energy use and production. Present layout will be contrasted with low-carbon re-designs of the built environment.
ANT-writers include Bruno Latour, Michel Callon and John Law.
Secondly, I employ Social Movement Theory to unravel the emergence of local energy initiatives as a new phase in the history of the energy movement, where new political demands are voiced for the democratic control of energy policies.
SMT classics include Alain Touraine and Alberto Melucci.
My theoretical contribution is to combine SMT and ANT in the analysis of recent attempts to decentralize and decarbonize the energy system. While I use the micro-analysis of ANT I aim to circumvent its myopia by tracing the national and regional networks that form the community energy movement. Likewise, I follow
political moves with SMT without ignoring its blind spot:
the technological embeddedness of social movements.
Materials and methods
Investigation of linkages of local initiatives to regional and national networks for community energy, such as traditional environmental movement organisations, village support organisations, as well as newly formed regional energy co-operations.
Finding out how the regional networks channel demands for the democratic control of energy policies to the national government and how they negotiated the Dutch Energy Covenant.
Methods include qualitative interviews, observation, design research. All materials are analysed with Nvivo.
Copyright Colin Purrington (
Conclusions
Central in my paper will be a discussion of the obduracy of the energy system and how it is challenged
- by new connections between communities and global networks,
- by new types of energy providers that are rooted in social networks, and
by new scripts for the local built environment.
Furthermore, I draw attention to the way local communities act as a testing ground for practices that foreshadow a decentralized and decarbonized energy system.
Literature (selection)
Jolivet E, Heiskanen E. Blowing against the wind—An exploratory application of actor network theory to the analysis of local controversies and participation processes in wind energy. Energy Policy 2010
Hoffman SM, High-Pippert A. From private lives to collective action: Recruitment and participation incentives for a community energy program. Energy Policy 2010
Viardot E. The role of cooperatives in overcoming the barriers to adoption of renewable energy. Energy Policy 2013
Walker G, Devine-Wright P. Community renewable energy: What should it mean? Energy Policy 2008
Schweizer-Ries P. Energy sustainable communities: Environmental psychological investigations. Energy Policy 2008
Tineke van der Schoor, Hanze University of Applied Sciences, tel
Supervisor: Harro van Lente, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University
Co-supervisor: Alexander Peine, Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University