Energy Transition without Societal Change? The Blind Spot of the Current Debate on 'Sector Coupling'

Still about 85 percent of the German energy demand consist of fossil and nuclear sources. Although there have been achieved considerable steps in greening the electricity system, a transition to more sustainability within the sectors of heat and mobility hardly takes place. Regarding this, the target of sector coupling, what refers to a wide-scale electrification of these sectors, recently has become a centre of gravity within the German debate on the energy transition. Although necessary on the one side, this debate reproduces critical shortcomings that already characterize the younger development of the energy transition’s frameworks: There is a strong tendency to reduce the transition to a large technical project that would succeed if the preconditions of technical feasibility, economical efficiency and public acceptance are given sufficiantly. Thus, the assigned role of society is restricted to passivity. Against this background, the proposed paper will discuss in how far democratic and participatory characteristics contributed to get the transition off the ground. To a large extent, economic and political success was achieved by this way in the past. Conflicts and social movements not only didn’t hamper the process, but even played a supportive or constructive role during earlier phases (Section 1). In contrast, the debate over sector coupling rather follows the path of the status quo. If society is addressed at all, it is usually mentioned in the context of “lacking acceptance“. As a consequence, there are several blind spots in this debate. To identify them and to analyze in how far they might jeopardize the progress of transition will be the task of Section 2. Whereas the main tendencies of the current transition process are centralization, increasing lacks of active participation by citizens and decreasing pace, electrification of heat and mobility will require new dynamics. Looking at the examples of the reformed Feed-In-Law (EEG), the contested extension of the energy transmission grid and the “Mieterstromnovelle”, the final part will propose, how significant deviation from the current path may enable the transition to draw new vitality (Section 3).