Contentions about Renewable Energy Plants and Community Decisions

In Germany, renewable energy projects are often realized on the local level implying respective community decisions. The paper covers two cases, a wind energy and a biogas project, initiated by sociologically “old” citizens (Elias 1965) and displays their process of realization. In both cases, there was an intense public debate about the projects, which involved conflicts between residents of the community. Residents living in the community since generations conflicted with relatively new inhabitants who tried to protect the landscape from further installations. In the wind energy case, the older citizens won the struggle. In the biogas case, the newer inhabitants dominated the local contention. The paper asks about the role of the counter initiatives in the respective process of mobilization, recurring to insights of community studies. It tries to answer the question how to understand the final decision of the community councils. For this, it presents the process of realization of each projects in a brief manner, showing the strategies of mobilization of initiatives and counter initiatives and comparing the initiatives and their roles and influence on the final community decisions. Both cases were part of the research project LITRES which explored the process of realization of renewable energy projects in communities. The research focused on the way local initiatives tried to assert their projects and convince their communities.