Presentation short abstract

This paper presents a comparative case study of Community Energy Initiatives in Greece, showcasing their contradictions, limitations, and potentialities as real-existing degrowth particularly within the context of austerity, residual redistribution eco-welfare and green capitalist paradigms.

Presentation long abstract

Community Energy Initiatives (CEIs) have been hailed as examples of real-existing degrowth with promising potential in furthering energy justice and democracy. However, there is a lack of attention paid to the effects and constraints that austerity eco-welfare regimes and privatized energy systems impose on their capacity to actualize energy justice and democracy. Through a comparative case study of two CEIs with different governance structures (top-down and bottom-up) and geography (urban and rural) in Greece, this study showcases the contradictions, limitations, and potentialities of CEIs in delivering eco-social justice in green capitalist, residual welfare regimes. Through qualitative interviews, document analysis, and in-person observation, the study employs a multi-level, inter-textual discursive methodology that situates the case studies within the broader, structural context and eco-welfare regime. Clashes between radical decommodification imaginaries and techno-managerial practices, universal claims-making and philanthropic redistribution policies and practices, common good conceptualizations and entrepreneurial discourses are identified as contradictory manifestations of the commons-commodity hybridity of CEIs. Central policies are shown to entail instrumentalization and cooptation tendencies that are limiting but not entirely defining the local initiatives which both internalize and resist dominant discourses in a contradictory manner. This study contributes to the spatialization of the “just transition” and situates community initiatives within broader structural socio-political dynamics furthering our understanding of local conditions and characteristics that define Real Existing Degrowth.