Repower Democracy · How grassroots energy initiatives are changing the face of democracy in Europe

Repower Democracy: How grassroots energy initiatives are changing the face of democracy in Europe

Recently, a wave of local resistance to increasingly risky methods of fossil fuel extraction has swept across many countries in the world and most of Europe. Some of the most sustained civil disobedience against shale gas development took place in Poland, the UK, Ireland and Romania. In places where the energy corporations abandoned the drilling sites, the communities are organising in egalitarian ways and forming new renewable energy co-operatives. The aim is to take responsibility for meeting their own energy needs in a way that is local and mitigates climate change. In this project, I asked whether these new local energy co-operatives and grassroots mobilisations against hydraulic fracturing might reveal the potential for a repowering of democracy, i.e. a reformulation of democratic models and a reorganisation of energy production along more egalitarian lines. The main aims were: (1) to investigate the forms of politicisation and imaginaries of egalitarianism in Polish and British communities and (2) to build interdisciplinary, inter-sectoral collaborations and draw up research-led strategies for local and systemic social innovation in the field of democratic self-organisation of energy initiatives. I investigated the popular and expert imaginaries of energy (renewable as well as from unconventional resources) and analysed them in the context of diverging temporalities and alternative historicities. The differing perspectives on shale gas or renewable energy may be influenced by the varying dispositions toward the past and the future. These diverging temporalities also signify a democratic imbalance of power and call for a more time-informed scholarship which takes into account the realities of the “anticipatory regime” that is characteristic not only of many energy projects but also the current social and cultural configurations. I have also explored, documented and analysed social and democratic impacts of shale gas developments in two locations: Lancashire, UK and the Grabowiec region in Poland and concluded that the failure to consider these aspects understates the potential and actual impact of these developments. Hence, I recommended that a social impact assessment be fundamental in all political decision-making that priorities public health and social well-being. I have also assessed the “energy potentials” for developing renewable energy initiatives in the researched localities. The findings were crucial in building inter-sectoral collaborations with local communities, experts and policy-makers. My ethnographic and participatory research about the impacts of shale gas developments served as a lens for investigating the significance of unconventional resources and renewable energy for democracy across scales. I have also analysed the factors and mechanisms that set Poland on the path to shale gas. The research outcomes have led me to revisit some of the classic notions of democracy, power and the state. This research contributed to critical enquiry into the possibilities of more democratic futures and their interrelationship with transitions of energy systems. It has documented barriers to active citizen engagement in democratic processes in the context of energy but it has also pointed to the egalitarian imaginaries and dynamics of grassroots organising in Europe. Grassroots energy initiatives have the potential for a repowering of democracy in Europe but they need to overcome some of the external and internal barriers which are generated by the very dynamics of the new transformations of the state and corporate power.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union