Detta är ett studiematerial för alla som vill göra något ihop med andra kring energi. Materialet tar upp hur vi kan bygga ett smartare, mer demokratiskt och miljövänligt energisystem genom att medborgare, kommuner, kooperativ och andra lokala företag samverkar. Det handlar om hur vi kan starta energigemenskaper för att producera, dela och spara på energi tillsammans. Energigemenskaper är ett sätt att jobba med energi och lokal utveckling. Att starta en studiecirkel kan vara början på många spännande initiativ. Detta studiematerial hjälper dig och några till att utforska olika möjligheter och med kunskap om möjligheterna göra något praktiskt. Kanske finns det redan ett initiativ du vill gå med i? I annat fall ger det här materialet rikligt med kunskap om initiativ som du och några andra kan ta tillsammans för en hållbar, smart och demokratisk energiomställning! 

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.

ENERGI HAR UNDER de senaste åren genomgått en förändring som samhällsfråga. Med raketfart har det gått från att vara en specialiserad domän för experter till en allmängiltig angelägenhet som flitigt omskrivs i dagspress. I synnerhet har det blivit tydligt att energi inbegriper mer än teknik. Debatterna om elkris, energisäkerhet, och elsystemets robusthet som följt i svallvågorna av Rysslands invasion av Ukraina är exempel på hur tekniken är tätt sammantvinnad med frågor av i högsta grad politisk och social karaktär. Den svåröverblickbara europeiska energimarknaden har också hamnat under luppi samband med dessa geopolitiska förändringar, inte minst eftersom en avkonsekvenserna har varit kraftigt stigande energipriser

In this paper, energy communities are examined as an arena within which the possibilities for a just and democratically oriented climate transition are currently being enacted. More specifically, it explores how energy communities (ECs) in Sweden are taking shape against the background of the EU’s Clean Energy Package, wherein ECs have been identified as an important instrument for increased citizen participation and deepened democratization. With our theoretical basis in critical social research, we examine the Swedish landscape of energy communities as a discursive battlefield, where sociomaterial arrangements and actor interests are under formation. Special attention is paid to actors’ political drivers for engagement, the ideological motivations that are expressed, the transformative strategies that are put into play, and the alliances that are formed. We argue that this is of sociological importance to scrutinize how laudable ambitions and visions of a climate-neutral society are put into practice, so as to illuminate power relations that otherwise risk being made invisible. We find that Swedish energy communities are generally forced to relate to a dominant innovation-oriented discourse with a depoliticizing effect. At the same time, we note that a variety of other ways of enacting community energy abound, which reflect values that deviate from the dominant discourse.

Local generation of renewable energy in energy communities has long been around, but has recently experienced an upswing. This upswing is partly due to the EU Clean Energy Package (CEP), where energy communities are introduced juridically as formal actors. Within this policy package, various values are attributed to local energy communities, particularly emphasising broadened citizen participation. Also in academic contexts, energy communities are assigned an important role for a just energy transition. Considering this increasing importance and policy prevalence, it is relevant to explore what types of energy communities exist and are emerging in light of the CEP, and which values these correspond with. We do so by exploring how Swedish solar energy communities are configured and what values they foreground, through the analytical lens of problematizations. Exploring how different configurations entail particular problematizations elucidates how certain values are constructed as relevant, possibly to the detriment of other possible values, thus deepening our understanding of solar energy communities' potential contribution to a just energy transition. We discern a pattern in that particular values related to energy system optimisation are foregrounded, rather than other values such as democratisation, indicating the existence of a broader hegemony that shapes configurations of Swedish solar energy communities.   

In this article unfolding processes of environmental governance are explored through the case of smart energy experimentation in Sweden. When experimentation merges with place-based dynamics, particular dispositions are shaped, with different implications for environmental politics. In accordance with other researchers’ findings it is illuminated how such dispositions tend to reinforce neoliberal environmental governance arrangements, whereas it is revealed how experimentation can also reconfigure governance. Attending to unfolding processes of accomplishing governance across a variety of spaces, this plasticity of experimentation is explored. The contribution consists of highlighting the situated dynamics playing out as environmental governance is produced across different places. This involves two analytical steps. First, disentangling some characteristics of experimentation as a situated disposition, through following how smart energy experimentation arranges environmental governance across the national Swedish energy and environmental policy landscape. The analysis highlights how particular characteristics of Swedish environmental governance molds experimentation into providing impetus for neoliberalization. Second, by zooming in two cases of experiments, elucidating the effects of the tentative and situated character of experimentation as governance is accomplished. Such analysis attends to the situated micro-politics of experiments, and how these can shape localized dispositions that refract broader neoliberal political rationality. Thereby the existence of a dominant ‘experimentation governmentality’, or disposition, is discovered, whereas situated experiments may always provide seedbeds of alternative forms of environmental governance due to experimentation’s plasticity.

This thesis investigates how smart energy experimentation arranges environmental governance in Sweden, focusing on the politics of such processes, against the background of an escalating environmental and climate crisis that necessitates urgent energy transformation. Empirically the thesis includes case studies of pilot projects in Stockholm, Malmö, Västerås, and on Gotland, and analysis of the policy landscape, mainly through text analysis and interviews. Theoretically the study takes a critical approach based on a Foucauldian understanding of governance. Concepts are derived from “governmentality studies” and science and technology studies. This approach aims to unpack experimentation as governance arrangement through asking questions about how governance is arranged beyond singular experiments, such as ideas and practices of achieving broader change beyond isolated experiments. 

The thesis shows how smart energy experimentation is incorporated into an existing governmental apparatus and underpinned by a broader political rationality, a “rationale of governance” crystallized in institutional arrangements and policy instruments. This political rationality underpins governance arrangements shaped through experimentation both across governmental agencies and policy networks and on a local level. The investigation also highlights contingencies of arranging governance across cases as ambitions are materialized, as well as the significance of different local contexts and the import of infrastructures on how governance is produced. 

The main contribution is a theoretical conceptualization of “experimentation” as arranging environmental governance, and empirically uncovering how governance is shaped beyond singular experiments in a contemporary Swedish context. Such analysis is currently lacking in the literature on environmental politics and energy transitions. The thesis thus elucidates how power relations are shaped through smart energy experimentation, contributing to shaping knowledge generation and interpretation of environmental issues, thus institutionalizing particular ways of handling environmental issues and improving the environmental condition.   

Experimente, Pilot- oder Demonstrationsprojekte sind in den letzten Jahren zunehmend zu einem zentralen Instrument der Innovationspolitik geworden, ja sogar zu einem zentralen Kennzeichen und wissenschaftsgesellschaftlichem Dispositiv‹ unserer ›experimentellen Gesellschaft‹ (Ansell und Bartenberger 2016; Böschen et al. 2017; Engels et al. 2019). Während solche Projekttypen traditionell vor allem dem Testen und Hochskalieren von innovativen Produkten und Techniken von der Laborebene auf eine industrielle Ebene dienten, hat ein zunehmender innovationspolitischer Fokus auf gesellschaftliche Herausforderungen wie den Klimawandel Experimente mit alternativen sozio-technischen Konstellationen und in alltäglichen, anwendungsnahen Kontexten in den Vordergrund gerückt (Kivimaa et al. 2017). Räumlich begrenzte Versuche mit neuen Mobilitätsformen (z.B. autofreie Stadtteile), energieautarke Regionen oder Feldversuche zur Anwendung von autonomen Fahrzeugen sind Fälle, bei denen es nicht nur um das Testen von Produkten geht, sondern ebenso um Erfahrungen mit neuen sozialen Praktiken und institutionellen Veränderungen. Was hier auf dem Prüfstand steht, sind also ganze sozio-technische Arrangements, gesamte ›Ökosysteme‹ von z.B. Mobilität, durch die soziale Akteur*innen zu Stakeholdern des Experiments werden und zukünftige Handlungsmöglichkeiten auf dem Spiel stehen (Marres 2020). Dieser experimental turn (Overdevest et al. 2010) geht einher mit dem wachsenden Einfluss von Konzepten wie sozio-technische Transitionen (z.B. des Energie- oder Verkehrssystems), neuen ›missions-orientierten‹ Innovationsprogrammen, die sich an gesellschaftlichen Herausforderungen (grand challenges) orientieren, etwa dem neuen Forschungsrahmenprogramm der Europäischen Union, und einer wachsenden Aufmerksamkeit für ›soziale Innovationen‹ und ›Systeminnovationen‹ (Diercks et al. 2019). Mit der Einbettung solcher Experimente in reale Nutzungskontexte geht auch eine Betonung partizipativer Elemente einher, durch die Nutzer*innen und andere für das Experiment relevante Akteursgruppen stärker in die Evaluierung, Wissensgenerierung und aktive Gestaltung von Technologien und ihren Anwendungskontexten einbezogen werden sollen (Delvenne und Macq 2020). Trotz dieser partizipativen Rhetorik und des Anspruchs, soziale Lernprozesse für eine Vielzahl von Akteur*innen zu ermöglichen, wurde der tatsächliche Beitrag solcher Experimente zu technischen und gesellschaftlichen Veränderungen nur in wenigen Fällen empirisch untersucht. Dieses Kapitel will sich kritisch mit der neuen Dominanz von Experimenten in der Innovationspolitik auseinandersetzen und stellt sich die Frage, was in der Praxis solcher Experimente eigentlich passiert und inszeniert wird. Handelt es sich tatsächlich um eine weitgehend entpolitisierte und konfliktfreie Strategie zur Entwicklung neuer klimafreundlicher Energie- und Verkehrsinfrastrukturen und einer nachhaltigeren Ökonomie und Gesellschaft? Oder werden in solchen Experimenten bevorzugt bestimmte Arten von Wissen produziert, die bestimmten Akteursgruppen eher zugutekommen als anderen? Wieviel Einfluss haben Nutzer*innen und Bürger*innen tatsächlich in der Praxis dieser Projekte? Oder reflektieren die Settings und Rahmenbedingungen von Experimenten dominante gesellschaftliche Strukturen und stärken vielleicht bestehende Machtverhältnisse mehr, als dass sie neue gesellschaftliche und technische Konstellationen ermöglichen?

As the mineral politics are filled with complex questions and connected to key challenges of our time, this paper sets out to analyze the worldviews and conceptualizations, or discourses, inherent in the Swedish plenary debate on mineral politics. The research approach is thus constructivist. The paper takes the year 1990 as its starting point as the Swedish mineral politics underwent radical changes during the early 1990s. The discourse analysis is inspired by John Dryzek, Norman Fairclough and Michel Foucault, and it is argued that certain ways to conceptualize political areas opens up and closes possibilities thus making it integral to study discourses.

One dominant discourse and one counter discourse is identified in the analysis, as well as a number of sub-discourses. A number of key themes are identified as central to the debate throughout the studied period, and these themes are granted different meanings within the framework of the different discourses. The main result of the paper is the conclusion that there are two overarching ways to conceptualize the mineral politics over time, epitomized by the dominant discourse and the counter discourse, with some variations summed up by the sub-discourses. One conceptualization is permeated by a technocratic and progress-oriented storyline, while the other conceptualization accentuates the ideological aspects of the mineral politics and stipulates the need to choose a political path. The results are connected to contemporary social theory continuously throughout the text, especially Ulrich Beck’s theories are used.

It is argued that even though the dominant framing accentuates that mining is essentially in everyone’s interest, it is clear that the Swedish mineral politics have favored certain goals and interests above others for a long time.