From grassroots to centralization—the development of local and regional governance in the german energy transition

Abstract

In the process of sustainability and especially electricity transition, the local and regional levels gain a new importance. Both social movements as well as governments from different levels (state, federal) are mobilizing and/or addressing local actors. The way this has been done and the capacities for local actors to have a say in the way transition processes do unfold, however, has changed significantly over the last decades in Germany. The paper will use the example of wind energy projects to analyze how multilevel governance arrangements have changed over time. The main thesis will be that the available repertoires of activities for local actors have become increasingly limited due to increasing policy management activities by state and federal governments. Especially the creation of artificial markets and auctioning devices have severely limited the scope of action for local actors. The article will reconstruct the changes in the multi-level governance structure and assess the effects on the development of wind energy by studying in detail two cases.