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during energy transitions in a given context. The four registers along
which legitimation is practised—discursive, bureaucratic, technocratic and
financial—play out within each dimension represented in the rows. These
dimensions include spatiality, temporality, opportunism, prefiguration,
performativity, power-play and routinisation (or normalisation). The table
indicates two main cases which concern each dimension, but aspects certainly surface in other cases as well. The dimensions structure our description of how practices of legitimation can be applied to analyse accountability
in energy transitions governance. Despite the wide range of these five
cases, future work along these lines will doubtless generate additional
dimensions. Whereas the four registers along which legitimation is practised are elaborated in Chap. 2 (Sareen 2019b), the cross-cutting dimensions are explicated below with summary reflections on how each one
manifests in two of the five cases.
10.1.1
Spatiality
Legitimation plays out simultaneously at and across multiple spatial scales
during an energy transition. At stake are questions of distribution—where
are benefits and burdens relocated from any sectoral changes, where are
winners and losers based—and of the locus of decision-making and the
sites that it affects across the spatial scale. In Berlin’s historical energy
transitions case, the spatial dimension appears pertaining to where energy
is generated, where energy infrastructure is financed and where energy
infrastructure is controlled and owned. This varies in relation to Berlin’s
territorial boundaries as well as the political economy of its geographical
context. In the Nordic electric mobility transitions case, the spatial dimension relates to material decoupling in terms of where energy is produced
to power the electric grid and where vehicles are manufactured. It also
relates to where energy infrastructure like charging stations comes up,
which jobs this creates and displaces, and what siting implies for which
actors control electric mobility. Similar multi-scalar issues come up concerning material inputs (such as cobalt and lithium) as well as waste flows
(especially electronic waste).
10.1.2
Temporality
Legitimation plays out differently over time, both during the same energy
transition and during sequential ones. The temporal dimension directs
S. SAREEN ET AL.
during energy transitions in a given context. The four registers along
which legitimation is practised—discursive, bureaucratic, technocratic and
financial—play out within each dimension represented in the rows. These
dimensions include spatiality, temporality, opportunism, prefiguration,
performativity, power-play and routinisation (or normalisation). The table
indicates two main cases which concern each dimension, but aspects certainly surface in other cases as well. The dimensions structure our description of how practices of legitimation can be applied to analyse accountability
in energy transitions governance. Despite the wide range of these five
cases, future work along these lines will doubtless generate additional
dimensions. Whereas the four registers along which legitimation is practised are elaborated in Chap. 2 (Sareen 2019b), the cross-cutting dimensions are explicated below with summary reflections on how each one
manifests in two of the five cases.
10.1.1
Spatiality
Legitimation plays out simultaneously at and across multiple spatial scales
during an energy transition. At stake are questions of distribution—where
are benefits and burdens relocated from any sectoral changes, where are
winners and losers based—and of the locus of decision-making and the
sites that it affects across the spatial scale. In Berlin’s historical energy
transitions case, the spatial dimension appears pertaining to where energy
is generated, where energy infrastructure is financed and where energy
infrastructure is controlled and owned. This varies in relation to Berlin’s
territorial boundaries as well as the political economy of its geographical
context. In the Nordic electric mobility transitions case, the spatial dimension relates to material decoupling in terms of where energy is produced
to power the electric grid and where vehicles are manufactured. It also
relates to where energy infrastructure like charging stations comes up,
which jobs this creates and displaces, and what siting implies for which
actors control electric mobility. Similar multi-scalar issues come up concerning material inputs (such as cobalt and lithium) as well as waste flows
(especially electronic waste).
10.1.2
Temporality
Legitimation plays out differently over time, both during the same energy
transition and during sequential ones. The temporal dimension directs
S. SAREEN ET AL.