Abstract
Renewable energy and social justice advocates are organizing around the potential for community-based democratic organizations to promote more decentralized, sustainable, and just societies. Within this movement, consumer-owned electric utilities are often seen as central actors. Yet, there has been little systematic investigation into why integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) varies across these utilities. We explore this question using literature on sustainability transitions and strategic action fields. Choices about when and how to integrate DERs are shaped by new interpretations of long-standing principles, existing institutional relationships, and a utility's political power. We identify how four divergent strategies shape distinct technology configurations with differences in physical scale, concentration of political authority, and distribution of economic benefits. These differences suggest that local technology ownership may not be sufficient to motivate change in some contexts. Policy addressing political processes and ownership scale may be needed to accelerate more sustainable and just energy transitions.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 17-33 |
Number of pages | 17 |
Journal | Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions |
Volume | 36 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Sep 2020 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was supported by the McKnight Foundation, USA under the grant: Opportunities and Challenges for Municipal Utilities and Rural Electric Cooperative in Responding to Distributed Energy Resources (Awarded 2016 and Extended 2017, 17-202). We thank Marta Monti and Kimberly Mullins for their research assistance on this project and seminar participants at the Energy Policy Research Conference, the Association for Public Policy and Management, and the American Solar Energy Society for comments and suggestions. Transcription services were provided by Verbalink.
Funding Information:
This research was supported by the McKnight Foundation, USA under the grant: Opportunities and Challenges for Municipal Utilities and Rural Electric Cooperative in Responding to Distributed Energy Resources (Awarded 2016 and Extended 2017, 17-202). We thank Marta Monti and Kimberly Mullins for their research assistance on this project and seminar participants at the Energy Policy Research Conference, the Association for Public Policy and Management, and the American Solar Energy Society for comments and suggestions. Transcription services were provided by Verbalink.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier B.V.
Keywords
- Community solar and customer-sited solar
- Distributed energy resources
- Interpretive frames
- Municipal utilities and electric cooperatives
- Strategic action fields
- Structuration of sociotechnical regimes