Techno-Political Change and Ownership Scenarios for Energy-Mobility-Housing

A key overlooked dimension of sustainability transformations is the question of ownership. Who owns the sustainable solutions in mobility, energy and housing and what are the implications of ownership structures for the realization of just transitions? This paper reflects on some ongoing and emerging changes in the key infrastructural sectors of energy, housing and mobility. In the wake of sustainability challenges, innovations have emerged such as heat pumps, batteries, and vehicle-to-grid, that increasingly connect these sectors. “Economies of sectoral integration” are present on the system management side, where controlling the energy system becomes easier if one also controls heating and mobility systems, and vice versa. On the consumer interface side, economies of sectoral integration are also present as network effects facilitate “superapps” that provide access to services in energy, mobility, housing and beyond (Van Der Vlist et al., 2025; Weiss & Hasselwander, 2025). In this paper, I take a broad view of ownership as having an income dimension (abilities to benefit financially), a control dimension (abilities to use, alter or dispose an asset) and a social dimension (socially shaped meanings and feelings about the ownership of asset). Methodologically, this essay draws on a critical-explorative approach. I use an empirical dataset from the JUSTNEXUS project (https://justnexus.sites.uu.nl/), that contains empirical examples of initiatives of sectoral integration in energy mobility and housing from around the globe. Conceptual discussion of empirical examples is followed by the development of “guiding images” of different socio-technical futures as to enhance reflection on current developments. The results of the study illustrate how both public and private companies increasingly offer solutions that cross domains of energy-mobility-housing with implications for ownership of consumers. For example, in The Netherlands, social housing associations have become active in the domains of renewable energy and mobility provision. Residents benefit from shared cars but also become more dependent on their property owners for essential services. Commercial parties have started to offer the integrated concept of “housing-as-a-service” with an integrated lease of building, energy and mobility options. Originally a car company, Tesla offers various renewable energy services from an integrated vision of renewables. Increasingly, the integration of energy-mobility-housing services is facilitated by cloud and AI services from large technology firms. Conceptually, to grasp changes in ownership structures in the energy-mobility-housing sectors the paper develops a techno-political lens, that moves beyond dominant socio-technical understandings in two ways: First, without resorting to technological determinism, we need to study how specific technological designs contribute to making some futures more likely than others. I propose to use the concept of “affordances” that refers to the action potentials that arise from the interaction of technologies and societal context (Leonardi, 2011; Seidel et al., 2025). Second, ownership structures in energy-mobility-housing sectors are profoundly shaped by political ideologies. Take for example the privatization of electricity systems under the influence neoliberal ideology in the past years, or shifts from social housing to home ownership and, increasingly, private rent.