42
4.1 What Is the Case and Why Is It an energy
transItIons Case?
This chapter explores ways of contextualising accountability and accountability crises, both temporally and spatially. Using the case of Berlin over
the past 100 years, it aspires to enrich debate on accountability in energy
transitions—the focus of this book—by reflecting on historical precedents
that can challenge some ‘presentist’ assumptions underpinning much of
this work. Following the editor’s invitation (Sareen 2019), I reframe
ongoing and published research on Berlin’s multiple energy transitions
(Moss 2014, 2016; Becker et al. 2017) in terms of crises of accountability
and practices of legitimation. In doing so, I hope to sensitise future
research on this topic to the importance of time and space. The underlying
question guiding the chapter is: how can historicising accountability contribute to our understanding of energy transitions and ways of
researching them?
Berlin lends itself to such an analysis in part because accountability has,
today, become a key issue of contention over the future of the city’s energy
infrastructures (Becker et al. 2015, 2017; Blanchet 2015). Over the past
decade, criticism of the city’s electricity and gas utilities, which were both
fully privatised during the 1990s, has targeted not only their reluctance to
embrace the low carbon agenda but also—significantly—their resistance to
public scrutiny and the democratisation of decision-making processes. A
local referendum to remunicipalise Berlin’s electricity grid narrowly failed in
November 2013, but the campaign generated two social movements. These
have since managed to reframe energy policy debates in the city around
issues of accountability, participation and transparency. The first is the Berlin
Energy Roundtable (Berliner Energietisch), a coalition of approximately 50
environmental, leftist and anti-gentrification organisations that calls for a
democratic, ecologically oriented and socially just ‘citizens’ utility’. The second is an energy cooperative, Citizen Energy Berlin (BürgerEnergie Berlin),
that is at least partly owned by a collective of consumers. Pressure from
both organisations has succeeded in changing the city government’s policy,
which in its current red–red–green complexion has established a small publicly owned energy utility in direct competition with the incumbent
Vattenfall. This utility—Berlin Energie—is designed to be more accountable not only to local politicians but also to local energy consumers.
While restricting attention to this ongoing experiment in urban energy
democracy would be revealing enough about how accountability is being
T. MOSS
4.1 What Is the Case and Why Is It an energy
transItIons Case?
This chapter explores ways of contextualising accountability and accountability crises, both temporally and spatially. Using the case of Berlin over
the past 100 years, it aspires to enrich debate on accountability in energy
transitions—the focus of this book—by reflecting on historical precedents
that can challenge some ‘presentist’ assumptions underpinning much of
this work. Following the editor’s invitation (Sareen 2019), I reframe
ongoing and published research on Berlin’s multiple energy transitions
(Moss 2014, 2016; Becker et al. 2017) in terms of crises of accountability
and practices of legitimation. In doing so, I hope to sensitise future
research on this topic to the importance of time and space. The underlying
question guiding the chapter is: how can historicising accountability contribute to our understanding of energy transitions and ways of
researching them?
Berlin lends itself to such an analysis in part because accountability has,
today, become a key issue of contention over the future of the city’s energy
infrastructures (Becker et al. 2015, 2017; Blanchet 2015). Over the past
decade, criticism of the city’s electricity and gas utilities, which were both
fully privatised during the 1990s, has targeted not only their reluctance to
embrace the low carbon agenda but also—significantly—their resistance to
public scrutiny and the democratisation of decision-making processes. A
local referendum to remunicipalise Berlin’s electricity grid narrowly failed in
November 2013, but the campaign generated two social movements. These
have since managed to reframe energy policy debates in the city around
issues of accountability, participation and transparency. The first is the Berlin
Energy Roundtable (Berliner Energietisch), a coalition of approximately 50
environmental, leftist and anti-gentrification organisations that calls for a
democratic, ecologically oriented and socially just ‘citizens’ utility’. The second is an energy cooperative, Citizen Energy Berlin (BürgerEnergie Berlin),
that is at least partly owned by a collective of consumers. Pressure from
both organisations has succeeded in changing the city government’s policy,
which in its current red–red–green complexion has established a small publicly owned energy utility in direct competition with the incumbent
Vattenfall. This utility—Berlin Energie—is designed to be more accountable not only to local politicians but also to local energy consumers.
While restricting attention to this ongoing experiment in urban energy
democracy would be revealing enough about how accountability is being
T. MOSS