Context making in energy transitions: analyzing governance in fragmented spaces

Current energy transitions witness the emergence of myriad coalitions of societal actors that experiment with novel energy innovations. Where classical state institutions experience difficulties in addressing sustainability problems, such coalitions form a promising basis for a governance of transformative change. Yet, these coalitions of firms, citizens, scientists, designers, and others come with their own perils and politics: their temporary, impromptus and ‘in-between’ character eludes formal regulation. Moreover, as they span boundaries between disparate regimes they are bound to run into the resistances of dominant discourses and the inertia of existing (infra)structures. This paper explores how the dynamics in these coalitions help to understand the politics of energy transitions and the governance of transformation in general. Drawing on the findings in my PhD research, it develops a conceptual framework for the creative work of actors in such networks and discusses its insights into a governance perspective on (energy) transitions beyond the classical political arena’s of the state. In order to do so, this paper is set up as follows. First, it will develop a heuristic framework for analyzing the creativity in social practices through which such coalitions emerge, and through which they come to transform their environment. Theoretically, I will draw on practices theories (Bourdieu 1996; Joas 1996; Shove et. al. 2013) and recent discussions in the power literature on synergies between theories of domination and empowerment (Haugaard 2012; Clegg 2012). Empirically, I will draw on my research in a longitudinal case study of wind energy development in Denmark, and two ethnographic studies of recycling in the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands and greenhouse innovation in the Dutch agriculture (Hoffman 2013; Hoffman and Loeber 2015). Secondly, this paper will discuss the contributions of the relational framework thus developed to the study of the governance of structural change. In this discussion I will argue that that the framework helps to grasp how specific innovative practices become interpretive vehicles for structural change as actors involved recognize, renegotiate, and reach out to opportunities resident in existing structures. In doing so, it offers a refined reading of the creative tinkering of actors in practices, which might be used for future research into new governance practices. .