Short Abstract:

This panel considers changes in energy systems as a consequence of efforts to resolve climate change. Panellists explore what energy production and decarbonisation mean for ideas about the commons and practices of commoning at different scales.

Long Abstract:

Anthropogenic global warming looms large, and we experience a shift from mitigation measures to adaptation attempts. Climate change is now on the agenda of individuals and institutions at a variety of scales. The increasing attentiveness has resulted in the global establishment of a loss and damage fund, national exits from coal mining, and localised installations of renewable energy systems.

This multiscalar approach is unsurprising because climate change is a hyper-object (Morton 2013), and so too is energy, which is central to climate change mitigation. Energy not only permeates all areas of life, but it is simultaneously non-local and inter-objective. It is not graspable, but the basis of all living being on earth. Energy is immaterial but materialises; can be sold, used and exhausted, but physically speaking it only transforms and is never used up.

What does this imply for commons found or newly established across the globe? Are wind, sun, ocean waves or geological deposits considered common goods, and (how) does this change through their commercial use for energy production? How do they figure in more-than-human-approaches? Is energy production only related to an idea of commons if executed in decentralized and/or in citizen energy projects? Does the scale of an energy project or the related investments matter for an idea of commons or commoning? This panel invites papers that consider these and related questions from a theoretical and/or empirical perspective.

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