Local energy, a political resource: dependencies and insubordination of an urban “Stadtwerk” in France (Metz, Lorraine)

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article analyses the factors that motivate local energy production and transition and opposing lock-ins, within the context of urban municipal energy managment, in France. A new conceptual framework, local and domestic geopolitics, is mobilized to shed light on the conflictuality of this process, the political resources activated by local authorities in front of national operators, the links between energy control and power at the local level, ultimately refocusing questions of energy justice. We present an in-depth case study of the border city of Metz, which inherited a municipal energy company founded during the German annexation. It revealed the reasons and the means by which, since the beginning of the twentieth century, energy became a local resource and its production was expanded, in spite of a centralized energy system. Local energy was found to be a political construction, serving to reinforce local authority. In the context of energy transition, it is becoming a new energy resource, local actors intending it to progressively take the place of centralized energies, a focal point of a new geopolitics of energy. Within this geopolitical landscape, the power and benefits conferred by the control of energy production is found to be a central dimension of energy justice. In Metz, this power and benefits has not been better shared than at the national level, whether in procedural, distributive, or recognition terms, serving the career of a mayor and the local finances, rather than democratization of energy choices.