Struggles for public power are a key terrain of struggle in energy transitions, and can be regarded as campaigns for energy commoning. This talk examines three urban social movements for public and democratic control of energy — in Berlin, Minneapolis, and Rochester, NY — that the panelist has direct experience with, and argues that they are attempts to bring movement-based conceptions of energy democracy into urban political institutions that can be seen as attempts for both commoning and moments of politics.
The movements have demanded public utilities advance just urban energy transitions, but more than that, they demanded grassroots participation in and benefit from those transitions. This instituted a demand for self-determination and social control over publicly owned goods (energy utilities). The movements therefore tried to transform state institutions and change what is thought necessary for sustainable energy transitions. This approach to urban energy transitions is unique in combining democratic demands that attempt to re-make the how of local politics and institutions. This remaking is explained as an attempt to institute practices of commoning.
I develop this argument by showing how these movements undertook unique strategies that attempted to shift the boundaries of the politically possible and advance specific visions of commoning energy that could extend towards broader socio-ecological and democratic transformation. By conceiving of the state as an open terrain of struggle, it is possible to see practices of commoning in, against, and beyond the state (Cumbers 2015, Angel 2017 and 2019). However, to do so, I advance that movements must also achieve moments of politics in a Rancierian sense, or rupture in the idea of what is possible and what the state must respond to.
In these efforts, movements have had mixed success, showing the entrenched market power of investor owned utilities, especially in the US. Through in-depth participatory case studies including roles as a movement practitioner, this contribution can examine how these movements succeeded in creating politics around energy issues and forcing the hand of local governments. If movements aim to win the right to govern and to common energy, there must be a broader discussion of and support for these movements to overcome immense obstacles of consolidated financial and political power.
