Technopolitics of future-making: The ambiguous role of energy communities in shaping energy system change

Abstract

Implementing the EU Clean Energy Package (CEP) and its provisions for strengthening energy communities – the cooperative production and management of energy at local level by citizens, a concept emphasising citizen participation and empowerment – has opened a new arena for contestations over energy futures in Sweden. An aim of CEP is to contribute to just energy transitions through citizen participation and democratisation by using the potential of energy communities to reconfigure socio-material relations of the energy system. However, different actor constellations claim interpretative privilege about the role and importance of energy communities in a low-carbon future. To better understand political contestations over energy futures, we unpack broader discursive patterns and their socio-material enactments related to legally define and regulate the operation of energy communities in Sweden. Through the analytical lens of socio-technical imaginaries and technopolitics, we explore struggles over energy futures within conduits of institutionalised policymaking and attempts by energy communities to navigate technopolitical barriers in relation to grid infrastructure, power relations, actor constellations, rules and regulations and knowledge claims. We find that energy communities are not easily accommodated to the dominant socio-technical imaginary of Sweden’s energy future. What is at stake in processes related to the transposition of the CEP into national law is essentially different political ideas of how society should be organised.