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Paper short abstract

Water-rich Swiss Alpine cantons host diverse small hydropower projects. This paper examines how families and collectives sustain these installations as shifting knowledge, laws, markets and family ties shape the everyday work that keeps energy flowing.

Paper long abstract

“Green”, “small-scale” and “locally owned” are the keywords that shape debates on desired energy futures. Yet in the Swiss Alpine cantons, small-scale and locally owned hydropower production has been practiced for more than a century. Private, collective and public ownership of land and streams has given rise to a wide array of management arrangements. In the Alpine canton of Uri a diversity of hydropower projects exists: from the smallest turbines on summer pastures, to private hydropower stations operating on customary water rights, to large hydropower plants.

This paper focuses on small-scale hydropower plants (up to 100 kW), owned and managed by individuals, families and collectives. Some of these plants have been in operation for more than a century, others were built within the last 40 years. Turbines and generators are typically located in house basements or in small huts adjacent to the main residence, maintaining a distance between the noisy machinery and family life.

In this paper, I examine how families and collectives organize—or fail to organize—themselves to keep the hydropower infrastructures functioning. I discuss the challenges of maintaining flows of knowledge across generations and genders, the fragility of neighborhood networks, and legal and market uncertainties. Beyond the polarized discourse on green transformation, my research reveals the everyday engagements with machines, weather, water and land, as well as with the complex family ties, positionalities, moral obligations and affects that at times enable—and at times hinder—the flow of energy.