Challengers in energy transitions beyond renewable energy cooperatives: community-owned electricity distribution cooperatives in Spain

Abstract

Over the last decade, grassroots challengers to the Spanish electricity regime have grown in number and diversity. But whilst ‘newer’ renewable actors have attracted increasing scholarly attention, ‘older’, affordability-oriented challengers remain under-studied, despite their evolution. Prompted by an interest in potential coalitions of challengers in Spain, we draw inspiration from the Multi-Level Perspective to explore how traditional, community-owned electricity distribution cooperatives ‘read’ the energy transition and act accordingly. Our analysis traces the evolution of one such cooperative, the Cooperativa Elèctrica d’Alginet (CEA), and draws on 16 interviews, secondary literature and media reports. We scrutinise how CEA frames changes in the landscape, windows of opportunity in the regime, and the evolution of challengers. Our key finding is a growing alignment of CEA with the frames espoused by the younger renewable cooperatives. This rapprochement invites further research about emerging political coalitions between extant and novel challengers in national electricity regimes.

Keywords:

• Energy transition
• coalitions
• multi-level perspective
• challengers
• Spain
• electricity distribution cooperatives

Notes on contributors

Ivan Cuesta-Fernandez is a post-doctoral researcher at the Universitat Politècnica de València. His research looks at the spatial dimension of energy transitions and, more generally, infrastructure. He also teaches International Political Economy at the Valencia International University.

Sergio Belda-Miquel is lecturer at the Universitat de València, Faculty of Economics, Deparment of Marketing. PhD in Local and International Development. His research interests include grassroots and social innovation, sustainable consumption, transitions to sustainability and international development.

Carola Calabuig Tormo Associate Professor at the Universitat Politècnica de València, at the Engineering Projects Department and INGENIO CSIC-UPV (Research Institute on Innovation). PhD in Engineering and Development Planning. Her research interests include sustainability, transitions to sustainability, grassroots and social innovation, international development cooperation and global citizenship.

ORCID

Ivan Cuesta-Fernandez http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0555-3339

Sergio Belda-Miquel http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0164-5487

Notes

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Universitat Politècnica de València [Grant Number CCD ADSIDEO 2016].