The proposed paper will analyze the politics of the Energy Transition in Germany. Using the theory of strategic action fields as an analytical instrument to analyze the contentious state of the German energy supply system. The main argument of the proposed paper will be that the energy transition in Germany has been a process starting in the nineteen-eighties of the last century and essentially has been driven forward by movement and bottom up actors. The transition actually seems to run into difficulties at exactly the moment it became politically institutionalized. Now the incumbents are fighting for their survival. This fight for survival crystallizes around two aspects of the German energy transition: the technological question: what sources for energy supply shall be used in the future and what kind of architecture shall be developed: the traditional centralized architecture for the generation and distribution of electricity or a more decentralized architecture.
