Session 2. 5. B.

In this paper, I examine the interrelations between private, common, and public ownership of water resources. To do so, I draw on 18 months of ethnographic research conducted in Norway between 2018-2020, as well as preliminary research that builds the foundation to a new research project on water ownership in Switzerland. In particular, I will be exploring the tensions between water as a common good and its commodification. This is against an energy transition and climate change context, where water, on the one hand, becomes increasingly valuable as a source for renewable energy generation, and on the other hand, constitutes a scarce and precarious resource against the backdrop of global water crises. In this paper I will ask: Who owns water? What are the ethical, ecological and socio-economic responsibilities associate with water ownership and production rights? And how do leaders of industry and policy envision our common water futures?

The provision of household heating is a sector long overlooked by social science research on energy. Recent political aspirations towards the decarbonisation of household heating in Germany generate renewed interest in collective and neighbourhood-based forms of heat provision, involving technologies such as ground storage and block-type thermal plants, small-scale networks, and often engendering decentralised forms of ownership. These solutions stand aside established forms of utility district-heating and individual household solutions based on gas or electricity. But until now, community and neighbourhood heat solutions are mostly discussed regarding their technical potential for replacing carbon emissions, while little is known about their organisational features and their conditions for success.

Based on fieldwork in Western and Southern Germany, this paper provides an interpretation of typical cases for collective approaches to household heating. It, first, presents an overview on common technological and organisational features. The paper, second, analyses the emergence of these initiatives against the context of specific local market structures and actor constellations. Third, it provides an interpretation of the commons features of these projects, namely how they are set between approaches towards coproduction, community provision and critical urban commons. The paper will conclude with an outlook on future research into local heating systems as a commons between energy markets, decarbonisation strategies and bottom-up activities.

The concept of the ocean as common shared by all humans has been controversial for a long history. Many existing research tends to center around the capital relationships, legal statuses, and issues of accessibility around the ocean, which presume ocean commons as static and bounded properties. This study, however, wants to mobilize the notion of common as a verb, namely, “commoning” (Gibson-Graham et al., 2016), to explore the dynamic relationships between coastal communities and the ocean. During the energy transformation of Taiwan in recent years, the large-scale MRE development created friction among coastal residents, fishermen, and local governments, yet it also created a new space for debating, negating, and collaboration where both human and non-human actants are involved. Based on the forthcoming ethnographic fieldwork in Taiwan, this study asks: How do old coastal communities develop, reconstruct, and evolve into new ocean commoning-communities, or how do they disintegrate during the development of Marine Renewable Energy (MRE)? What are the new goals and responsibilities to drive them together? How do non-human actants shape the commoning process, and how do they challenge the traditional paradigm of energy that is based on mathematical and scientific understanding? By exploring the commoning process around large-scale and state-leading MRE development, this study aims to understand the political potential of more-than-human commoning-communities and opens up the space for re-imagine the more socially inclusive and environmentally just energy future, where the state and large cooperation inevitably involved.