Why do sustainable materialism initiatives rise and fall over time? Insights from the case of cooperative energy projects in Denmark and France

ABSTRACT

Community supported agriculture, ecovillages, and renewable energy cooperatives are all instances of sustainable materialism initiatives. Currently, a wealth of research assesses their prefigurative dimensions and documents their market strategies; yet there is little explanation of why such initiatives rise and fall over time. This article aims to fill this gap. To do so, I investigate the lifespans of renewable energy cooperative projects in Denmark and France. Based on a qualitative comparative analysis, I argue that the rise and fall of these projects can be explained by the evolution of one type of economic power: the power of orientation, or the ability of collective organizations to simultaneously act in and act on a policy regime to create market opportunities.

KEYWORDS:

• Social movements
• sustainable materialism
• comparative research
• energy democracy
• renewable energy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

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

Notes

1. We distinguish three main border institutions: the financing institutions of the electric companies (mainly the banks), the ‘producers of technological knowledge’ (engineers, research laboratories) and the organisms regulating the electricity networks (e.g. the Danish Energy Agency in Denmark or Ofgem in the United Kingdom. These institutions are named border institutions because they help or hinder the cooperative energy projects to cross two types of borders: one from high uncertainty to stabilized uncertainty level regarding the realization of a cooperative energy project; another from project proposal to project potential realization (from having an idea to doing actions to finalize it).

2. In addition to Denmark and France, this research included also the United Kingdom.

3. This article deals with the meso and macro scales. For insights regarding the micro scale of cooperative energy projects on the ground, see Wokuri (2021).

4. This policy tool has ‘three most important design features leading to high levels of investment security: the right to export all electricity to the grid (purchase obligation) at a certain price (fixed tariff) for a certain number of years (long payment duration)’ (Jacobs 2014, p. 757).