Technopolitics of future-making: The ambiguous role of energy communities in shaping energy system change

Abstract

Implementing the EU Clean Energy Package (CEP) and its provisions for strengthening energy communities – the cooperative production and management of energy at local level by citizens, a concept emphasising citizen participation and empowerment – has opened a new arena for contestations over energy futures in Sweden. An aim of CEP is to contribute to just energy transitions through citizen participation and democratisation by using the potential of energy communities to reconfigure socio-material relations of the energy system. However, different actor constellations claim interpretative privilege about the role and importance of energy communities in a low-carbon future. To better understand political contestations over energy futures, we unpack broader discursive patterns and their socio-material enactments related to legally define and regulate the operation of energy communities in Sweden. Through the analytical lens of socio-technical imaginaries and technopolitics, we explore struggles over energy futures within conduits of institutionalised policymaking and attempts by energy communities to navigate technopolitical barriers in relation to grid infrastructure, power relations, actor constellations, rules and regulations and knowledge claims. We find that energy communities are not easily accommodated to the dominant socio-technical imaginary of Sweden’s energy future. What is at stake in processes related to the transposition of the CEP into national law is essentially different political ideas of how society should be organised.

Introduction

Scholars have long since argued that energy communities can have an important function in driving and locally embedding transitions to a more sustainable energy system, not least through generating legitimacy for decentralised, renewable energy generation, the local integration of energy supply and demand as well as the behavioural and institutional changes required for this (Lode et al., 2022). In a generic sense, an energy community is a gathering of individuals or organisations who cooperatively produce, manage or share energy or energy-related services. However, the concept entails a significant interpretative flexibility. Some scholars assert that a pertinent question to ask in research on community energy is ‘what does it do’? (Creamer et al., 2019). Nevertheless, scholars have also shown how energy communities can contribute to democratising the energy system by fostering community building, increasing the involvement of citizens in transformation processes and shifting ownership of energy resources to grassroots constellations (Dall-Orsoletta et al., 2022). Potentially, energy communities can contribute to radically reorganising energy systems, leveraging deep transformations of political-economic relations by shifting ownership and control of renewable energy sources and grid infrastructures towards collective setups (Burke, 2018; cf. Newell and Simms, 2021).

Such a perspective on energy communities is closely connected to an increased attention to ‘just energy transitions’ among scholars, policymakers and practitioners. A common denominator of this discussion is the acknowledgement that transitions from fossil fuel-based energy systems to renewable-based systems create winners and losers and redistribute economic assets, recognition and power relations between different social groups in ways which may increase social polarisation and inequality. Scholarship emphasises, e.g., how governments may need to support workers in industrial jobs that will be dismantled, as well as how social movements and community-based local initiatives can forge coalitions working towards energy futures that centre on social justice (Ciplet, 2022; Newell and Mulvaney, 2013). Decentralised energy system configurations in citizen-led cooperative form such as energy communities are increasingly articulated as important sites for and actors of such just energy transitions (Burke, 2018; Szulecki, 2018). However, the interpretative flexibility of the energy communities concept also allows for various configurations of energy communities with much more questionable impacts on social justice and more equal power relations. Creamer and colleagues thus conclude that there is a pressing need for more research focusing on the actual impacts of community energy's role in contributing to just energy transitions (Creamer et al., 2019).

Mirroring these current discourses of a just energy transition and the central role attributed to energy communities therein (cf. Newell and Simms, 2021; Wahlund and Palm, 2022), the EU Commission recently launched a substantial energy policy package called ‘Clean Energy for all Europeans’, in short Clean Energy Package (CEP), as part of its efforts to decarbonise the European energy system. In its main regulatory documents, there is substantial emphasis on increased citizen involvement in the energy system, and energy communities are described as a central instrument to facilitate such ambitions of empowering citizens. Moreover, the CEP is entwined with other policies and programs embodying the EU:s broader just transition agenda, such as the Green Deal and REPower EU. The Green Deal provides the foundation for a transition towards renewable energy across the EU, while instruments such as the Just Transition Mechanism are intended to ensure that burdens of this transition are alleviated and shared equally, exemplified, e.g. in a projected loss of fossil fuel-based industry jobs impacting workers in such regions (Moesker and Pesch, 2022). The CEP introduces a legislative framework and instruments to ensure that the energy transition envisioned in the Green Deal does not neglect questions of social justice and equality – the recast Renewable Energy Directive (EU) 2018/2001 (REDII) in particular highlights values such as the democratisation of energy systems and citizen empowerment as central features of energy communities.

The CEP introduces formalised legal definitions of energy communities, stating that they can generate benefits extending beyond provision of energy services, e.g., related to equality by mitigating energy poverty and facilitating participation for vulnerable groups of households. Within the CEP framework, renewable energy communities are defined as ‘a legal entity that, in accordance with the applicable national law, is based on open and voluntary participation, autonomous, effectively controlled by shareholders or members that are located in the proximity of the renewable energy projects that are owned and developed by that legal entity; the shareholders or members of which are natural persons, SMEs or local authorities, including municipalities’ (DG Environment, n.d.). Energy communities against the background of the CEP constitute organisational entities which contribute economic, social and ecological benefits for society that reach beyond financial profit and values narrowly related to the provision of energy services. Thus, the interlinkage with the EU:s broader just transition agenda can be observed in values ascribed to energy communities in the key legal documents of the CEP, including enabling citizen participation in the energy transition, providing leverage for marginalised groups, and alleviating energy poverty. While community energy is no new phenomenon, energy communities will for the first time be legally recognised as formal actors in the energy system when the CEP directives are transposed into member states’ legislation. This entails that member states must assess barriers for energy communities in contemporary rules and regulations, as well as provide enabling regulatory frameworks for such organisations. Thus, this new status will formalise energy communities as actors in the energy system and institutionalise (nation-specific) support structures for them, indicating how the EU Commission frames such entities as key instruments for just energy transitions.

Notwithstanding these ambitions, EU directives only provide a broad legal framework which has to be translated (transposed) into national law. This leaves room for different interpretations and attempts to shape the translation process according to the special interests of stakeholder groups. Also the question to which extent energy communities will contribute to the empowerment of local actors and a democratisation of the energy system depends on the specific national regulations introduced in light of the CEP and the concrete socio-material configurations of energy communities facilitated by these legal provisions, e.g. in terms of their interrelation with the current (centralised) energy infrastructure (Burke and Stephens, 2018). Much will thus depend on the social practices and socio-economic relations emerging within and around energy communities and the concrete roles they will assume in a future energy system. To better understand how energy communities contribute to shaping energy futures, it is vital to consider the governance processes and institutions that shape them (van Veelen, 2018). The ambitions expressed in the CEP framework thus are just a pretext for national struggles over energy futures and their enactment in law, institutions and socio-material configurations of the energy system. Different actors with particular interests and policy goals can be expected to claim interpretative privilege over the roles, rights and organisational forms of energy communities, as much as over visions of what energy communities should become and be able to do in a future energy system.

Against this backdrop, we take controversies about the transposition of the concept of energy communities into Swedish law as our starting point to explore socio-material struggles to define energy communities. We focus on struggles playing out across three arenas: institutionalised channels of state policymaking related to energy communities; contestations over legal interpretations and the practices of energy communities in formation. This provides a dialectical approach to analyse struggles over energy futures unfolding across different arenas simultaneously and explore how they interrelate. The implementation of the concept of energy communities in Swedish law opens up an arena for conflicts and negotiation, where different futures for the Swedish energy system and the positions and relations of various types of actors are at stake. In this article, we ask how these controversies about the legal implementation of energy communities are interwoven with the way energy futures are envisioned and enacted in the form of specific socio-material configurations.

Despite the ambition of the CEP to promote energy communities and the controversies around its transposition into national law, it has to be pointed out that this plays out before the background of a much longer tradition of community energy in Sweden with strong ties to the environmental movement, predominantly in the shape of wind-power cooperatives (Magnusson and Palm, 2019). However, the soil for energy communities to grow in has been exceedingly infertile in Sweden (Kooij et al., 2018). There are no articulated political visions or policy goals related to energy communities predating the transposition of the CEP and support mechanisms and policy instruments for energy transition are primarily directed towards homeowners of detached houses and for-profit firms. At the same time, Sweden portrays itself as a green frontrunner with high esteem for citizen participation, as has been emphasised, e.g. in relation to smart energy experimentation (Envall, 2021). These contradictions make Sweden a compelling country to study the new move to a legal implementation of energy communities, since the weak tradition and lack of support for energy communities give rise to tensions when mandated by the EU to legally implement and support energy communities – underlining how struggles linked to different kinds of energy futures unfold in relation to energy communities.

To highlight the entanglement of social and technical dimensions of energy futures and the use of particular socio-material arrangements to further specific political goals, we will draw on the concepts of socio-technical imaginaries and technopolitics. Both analytical frameworks will be developed in the next section. After a short overview on our methodological approach, we will then present the empirical analysis of the struggles around the CEP transposition process and, in a final section, the technopolitical strategies taken by energy community actors.

Conceptualising socio-material struggles: socio-technical imaginaries meet technopolitics

The way energy communities are implemented into law and are technically and organisationally arranged is closely related to the way future energy systems are imagined. The role of visions and imaginations of alternative futures in enacting socio-technical change has been a recurrent theme in science and technology studies (Konrad et al., 2017; McNeil et al., 2017). Concepts of socio-technical imaginaries seem particularly suitable to analyse the ongoing contestations over energy communities and their role in the making of energy futures. The crucial component of an imaginary for this analysis is its collective quality as already expressed in Anderson's (1983) seminal work on imagined communities. Following Jasanoff, we see socio-technical imaginaries as ‘collectively held, institutionally stabilised, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures, animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and social order attainable through, and supportive of, advances in science and technology’ (Jasanoff, 2015: 4). Socio-technical imaginaries are tied to institutionalised practices such as policy processes and scientific knowledge generation, often at the level of nation states (Ballo, 2015; Jasanoff and Kim, 2015).

Increasingly, this concept has been applied to study the dynamics of energy system change (Eaton et al., 2014; Jasanoff and Kim, 2013; Smith and Tidwell, 2016; Sovacool et al., 2020). Moreover, imaginaries can be regionally bounded and different imaginaries can be in conflict (Mutter and Rohracher, 2022). Processes of socio-technical change such as the introduction of energy communities as a formalised actor are always deeply intertwined with already existing, place-based visions of desirable futures and institutionalised practices in the energy system (Jasanoff and Kim, 2015). In this perspective, contestations about the way energy communities are enacted and transposed from an EU directive into national law, thus are closely connected to the mobilisation of socio-technical imaginaries of different energy futures. Our analytical aim then becomes unpacking broader discursive patterns in articulations of desirable Swedish energy futures and the place of energy communities therein. As Isaksson and Hagbert (2020) point out, integrating radical future visions in governance processes requires different types of institutional capacities such as knowledge or relational resources and mobilisation capacities. We focus particularly on some instances of institutionalised (state) policymaking in Sweden where the entanglement with specific imaginaries of a future energy system surfaces most explicitly. One of these instances is consultation rounds where policy proposals are scrutinised and commented on by various stakeholders before becoming formal regulations. Such consultation processes constitute fruitful empirical sites for studying conflicting imaginaries (Mutter, 2021). However, such imaginaries are only partly articulated in policy documents or other discursive accounts. More often, they are implicitly involved and enacted in, e.g. processes of institutionalisation or socio-material practices. We will thus not only focus our attention on the policy discourse around energy communities but will investigate how imaginaries of energy futures are inscribed in formal law-making processes as well as in the socio-material make-up of energy community configurations.

The way interests, visions and politics are inscribed in socio-material configurations such as community-based local energy systems is also addressed in the concept of technopolitics. Technopolitics refers to the politics of infrastructural arrangements, as defined by Gabrielle Hecht as ‘linked sets of people, engineering and industrial practices, technological artefacts, political programs, and institutional ideologies’ (Hecht, 2009; cf. Mitchell, 2002). Early work on technopolitics emphasised how the design of infrastructures acts as an important mechanism of inclusion and exclusion in social life and embodies certain ideas of social organisation (e.g., Winner, 1980). More often, however, the relationship between technological artefacts and their socio-political affordances is more ambiguous and complex, as described by Antina von Schnitzler in a study of how the rollout of prepaid water metres in South Africa was deeply entangled with politics. She shows how metres can become ‘a political terrain for the negotiation of central ethical and political questions concerning civil virtue and the shape of citizenship’ (von Schnitzler, 2013: 689). Similarly, we can expect that different energy community arrangements exclude or include certain types of actors (e.g., apartment owners, if regulation does not allow them to share electricity from their rooftop PV panels), facilitate or hinder certain types of engagement (e.g., joint use of batteries) and dis/empower actors with different stakes in these local energy systems (e.g., citizen-owned vs utility-owned local grids).

With the concept of technopolitics, we aim to sensitise our analysis to material politics of discursive struggles (Barry, 2013). The introduction of different energy community configurations always entails such material politics as different socio-material configurations of energy communities are imbued with power relations, interests of different groups of actors such as incumbent energy utilities or local community organisations. The technopolitics of enacting specific versions of energy communities is also closely related to the mobilisation of certain imaginaries of Sweden's energy future, e.g. in the examples above, a decentralised energy system structure with local communities able to cooperatively produce and manage energy through jointly owned local grids and production and storage facilities vs. an imaginary with much more powerful utilities, mainly driven by commercial interests and owning the grid as well as controlling all generation and distribution beyond household level.

Political agency cannot only be ascribed to material objects but can equally be found in knowledge practices. Cost-benefit analysis and energy optimisation models serve as particular calculative devices (Callon and Muniesa, 2005) and can have a significant impact on energy future-making, overriding other social concerns in energy transformation in Sweden (Envall, 2021; Melin et al., 2021). In a similar vein, Niskanen and Rohracher (2022) analyse how definitions and calculation procedures in low-energy house regulations and thus the design of these buildings are imbued with political interests and power relations. Similar points can be made about forecasting and scenario practices that tend to be central in shaping energy futures (cf. Andersson, 2020). In the context of energy communities, techno-economic optimisation modelling of decentralised configurations is a central knowledge practice. Such models shape the possibility corridor for energy communities by channelling imagination, making particular configurations legitimate and possible whilst excluding others as we will see in our analysis (cf. Beck and Oomen, 2021).

The lens of technopolitics can thus elucidate arenas of contestations and consolidations of imaginaries which are not commonly part of our understanding of struggles over energy futures. Technopolitics can be understood as an additional terrain for struggles over future imaginaries, playing out in parallel to national policy discourses and processes of law-making and institutionalisation. Analytically we will primarily attend to technopolitics through two energy communities under formation, and their attempts to navigate the Swedish energy landscape as a technopolitical arena where imaginaries are shaped and contested. This directs our gaze to the specific socio-material configurations that are enabled and constrained through forwarding particular rules and regulations as well as material configurations of infrastructures such as different arrangements of power grids in energy communities. Designing and implementing infrastructure systems can be seen as an important element of normalising particular energy community configurations and for encoding social visions into technopolitics (Bowker and Star, 2000; Easterling, 2016).

Energy futures are shaped both through discursive struggles and knowledge claims within state policymaking channels and through technical arrangements and juridical instruments. Socio-technical imaginaries and technopolitics are thus conceived of as two entangled but distinct domains. Looking across these extends our understanding of contestations over energy futures as these are shaped by governmental decisions, juridical preconditions, regulations, knowledge claims, technical arrangements, and infrastructural configurations. Zooming into socio-material political struggles to define energy communities can help us understand how the democratisation potential attributed to energy communities plays out in practice – with significant implications for ambitions of just energy transitions.

As the Swedish setting for the transposition of the CEP, which will introduce energy communities as legally formalised actors, has been historically unfavourable towards energy communities, the political support structures and juridical conditions created are of crucial importance for such entities to be able to contribute to, e.g. energy poverty alleviation and inclusion of marginalised groups in the energy transition, and thus for the EU:s just energy transition ambitions. This makes a compelling case for engaged scholarship to follow transposition processes particularly in Sweden, and to analyse which future imaginaries energy communities are entangled with. Our contribution lies in widening the analytical spectrum, from a focus on the institutionalised channels of state policymaking to struggles over interpretations of legal prerequisites and socio-material practices of energy communities in formation. This can elucidate how struggles over energy futures unfold across several arenas simultaneously, and while dominant regime actors may not articulate much interest in energy communities, our analytical perspective highlights how they might actually be engaged in socio-material struggles over energy futures in other arenas and through other means.

Methods

The empirical strategy is based on a broad mapping of discussions about, attempts at initiating and ongoing practices of Swedish energy community initiatives. The initial mapping extended throughout the duration of 2021, including both informal and semi-structured interviews, collection of documents such as government official reports, policy proposals, written responses from consultation rounds and participation in webinars. Within the text material, we paid special attention to policy documents formative for the Swedish energy landscape where future visions were expressed, such as government official reports and response letters from consultation rounds, and future planning scenarios from the Swedish TSO. Together with interviewees with prominent positions for such future-making, within the state research funding apparatus for energy R&D, the primary regulatory agency for energy (The Energy Markets Inspectorate), and regional energy agencies, it becomes possible to discern broader contours of a shared imaginary within state policymaking channels.

As we gained insight into the field, and established contact with various actors, we decided to follow two energy communities under formation more closely – one called ‘Austerland energi’ on the island of Gotland as a typical countryside setting, and Tamarinden, a new, ‘smart and sustainable’ city district under development in the city of Örebro. These cases together with the discursive mapping of the field, provided empirical avenues to investigate both the broader socio-technical imaginary of desirable Swedish energy futures and its technopolitics. The two cases were chosen as both were in formation and clearly very different contextually, albeit both drawing explicitly on the EU:s CEP, aiming to produce, store and share energy in new ways, with social sustainability through citizen participation and climate mitigation as key concerns. Consequently, the cases enable analysis of how energy communities congeal and navigate obstacles in two different settings in the same country, enabling nuanced analysis of the socio-material practices of these communities in relation to the policy landscape (including how they relate to the legal interpretations playing out on the national level and attempt to influence these). We approached both initiatives openly and discussed different avenues along which to build a critical action-oriented collaboration and became positioned as ‘analysts’ in both cases. Following the initiatives over time (ca 2 years at the time of writing) by the first author of this paper has let us build an empirical base through engagement with core project groups, interviews within and in relation to the initiatives, as well as observations during meetings and e-mail correspondence. In this work, we became ‘critical companions’ in both initiatives, attempting to balance acknowledging the needs of the project groups and contribute in various ways while providing a critical gaze to highlight marginalised perspectives (cf. Ziewitz and Singh, 2021 on the researcher as a ‘critical friend’).

In spring 2022, 21 semi-structured interviews connected to the two case studies and the broader policy landscape were carried out by the first author (see Appendix). Interviewees were carefully selected due to their positions in the policy landscape and the two energy community initiatives. They include civil servants at government agencies, municipalities, a local politician, representatives of different companies and interest organisations, citizens engaged in the two energy community initiatives and grid operators. This selection provides a strong basis to find both shared imaginaries and socio-material struggles over energy futures, with interviewees occupying different positions across the energy landscape, such as energy community initiatives, regional organisations working to facilitate energy cooperatives as well as grid operators. Further fieldwork included arranging a workshop series where stakeholders explored barriers for energy communities and how to navigate these, as well as on-site fieldwork on Gotland, participant observation, e.g., in project meetings in both Gotland and Örebro (in addition to following negotiations and interactions through e-mail correspondence with project members), various webinars and forums. Much fieldwork took place online due to the covid-19 pandemic, using software such as Zoom. Our empirical analysis thus builds on a combination of different sets of qualitative data, which was subsequently thematically coded and analysed. The analytical process was based on close reading of the empirical material and several iterations of open coding in Atlas.ti. According to our interest in shared imaginaries and socio-material struggles, we focused our analysis on assumptions which seemed taken for granted in the material and sentiments that were shared among actors, as well as lines of conflict and points of contention. Hence, we categorised the material according to these interests, and an analytical story emerged about a shared, dominant imaginary of Sweden's energy future and socio-material struggles playing out across our empirical arenas.

Democratisation or assimilation? CEP ambitions meet the dominant socio-technical imaginary of Sweden's energy future

As a first step in our empirical analysis, we unpack the role of energy communities in the socio-technical imaginaries of a future low-carbon energy system in Sweden. The provisions of CEP introduce energy communities with a vision of empowered citizens gaining more control over a largely decentralised and renewable energy system. In particular, the REDII and the Common rules for the internal market for electricity directive (EU 2019/944) (EMD) describe energy communities as important to facilitate democratisation of energy systems, e.g., through inclusion of low-income groups, alleviation of energy poverty and widened citizen participation in energy generation, distribution and ownership. Such a value orientation is closely aligned with imaginaries of energy democracy and just transition and is obviously at odds with the large scale, industrial-modern, centralised model of contemporary energy systems (Mitchell, 2013). This is certainly the case in Sweden, where scholars have highlighted how the large-scale electricity system with three dominant energy companies has proven to be less than supportive of grassroots engagement in energy (Magnusson and Palm, 2019). However, many structural features of this model also seem to dominate imaginaries of a more sustainable and low-carbon energy future, and the question is whether energy communities can become a vehicle to introduce more elements of democracy and justice into such collectively held visions of desirable energy futures in Sweden (cf. Kuchler and Bridge, 2018).

So far, the establishment of energy communities in Sweden indeed has rather been met with resistance or scepticism than support from established actors. Energy cooperatives utilising small-scale wind and solar power are a rare occurrence in the Swedish energy system, partly owing to unfavourable institutional conditions (Kooij et al., 2018). Actors engaged in cooperative enterprises and community energy described in interviews how energy communities encounter resistance from both the state apparatus and established actors in the energy system (Interview SERO & Coompanion). Especially the dominant position of a few large energy companies in the marketised energy system was regularly brought up during interviews as a major obstacle for energy communities, also in the context of the new CEP regulations (Interview ETC1; Interview Lawyer1; Interview Austerland2). An interviewee connected to the left-leaning organisation ETC – engaged e.g., in news media, construction, electricity production in solar parks and electricity trading – bluntly stated that energy communities essentially challenge head-on the large-scale model and its politics in Sweden.

Similar discursive patterns which do not regard energy communities as important to reach a carbon-neutral future energy system, appeared across the material – both in terms of actor constellations, expressions of desirable energy futures and knowledge practices. In an interview with two civil servants at the Swedish Energy Agency, it is explicitly stated that handling energy issues requires the professional approach of experts (cf. Hultman, 2015). One of the interviewees stated that the question of energy communities is not discussed outside of narrow circles of experts and that main challenges of electrification or the greening of industry and transportation could not be solved by energy communities. They could perhaps contribute to increased flexibility on the demand side (‘flexibility communities’) that would not have to be geographically defined, although, one interviewee remarked, it would then be unclear how such a setup would differ from conventional aggregation of household electricity and heat loads. This highlights how large-scale technological innovation is the guiding cognitive model for transforming the energy system. However, interviewees granted that the current structure of energy markets disadvantages small actors. Energy communities could provide an entry point beyond this “high threshold”, as one interviewee put it, ascribing energy communities the function of providing market leverage. Clearly, this imagined role for energy communities, providing market leverage and flexibility based on an increasingly digitalised grid infrastructure, seems far removed from the CEP where energy communities are described as an instrument to foster inclusive, citizen-driven energy transitions. Energy communities are frequently described as either irrelevant or marginally helpful in relation to the imagined Swedish energy future.

This lack of recognising energy communities as a desirable part of a future energy system is also salient in the latest biannual grid development plan of the transmission grid operator, which does not mention energy communities or the ongoing CEP transposition, while capacity strains, availability of power in an increasingly intermittent system and grid optimisation are described as pressing issues (SvK, 2021). Since such plans are an important institutionalised channel for shaping political priorities through imagining the future energy system and pointing to critical problems, this is of high relevance for the future place and shape of energy communities (cf. Hajer and Pelzer, 2018). Such patterns also became visible during a workshop with actors engaged in community energy aiming to explore barriers for such endeavours and strategies to navigate the barriers. In particular, the monopoly position of a few dominant actors and a market setup tilted in their favour – concession legislation, restrictive regulations for producing and sharing electricity locally, tax legislation – was singled out as an important barrier.

The empirical examples provide glimpses of a collectively shared imagination of Sweden's energy future and associated institutionalised practices – a dominant national socio-technical imaginary (Jasanoff and Kim, 2015). Much of this imagined future is essentially an extrapolation of structural features of the present (Adam, 1998). Further industrialisation and increased economic growth are assumed as inherently positive, just as the continued centralisation of the energy system seems to be a key element of the dominant imaginary (cf. Anshelm and Hultman, 2015). Energy communities are then articulated in relation to such assumptions – as instruments to ensure a smooth functioning of the grid infrastructure through system optimisation and alleviating grid capacity strains through demand flexibility that can be offered in ‘flexibility markets’ (see also van den Berghe and Wieczorek, 2022). The privatised market setup is assumed to remain, with energy communities envisioned as entry points for small-scale actors into segments of the electricity market (e.g., flexibility services) so far reserved for large market actors. As shown by other scholars, expertise in engineering and economics rather than democratisation, just transition or citizen participation are the guiding stars for informing Swedish energy policy (cf. Högselius and Kaijser, 2010; Hultman, 2015; Kall, 2011). Discussions about energy communities appear to mirror such tendencies, couched in techno-economic language and reflecting a broader pro-innovation bias, where social and political problems (e.g., of energy system democratisation) are essentially reframed as problems of an ‘innovation deficit’ (Pfotenhauer et al., 2019). As a result, the question of energy communities becomes largely depoliticised (cf. Envall, 2023).

Socio-technical imaginaries linked to such conceptions differ significantly from visions of energy democracy and justice expressed in the EU Clean Energy Package (Horstink et al., 2021). While CEP envisions energy communities as an important vehicle to achieve these goals, discursive articulations related to negotiating the transposition into Swedish law rather seem to redefine energy communities in a way which makes them compatible with the dominant Swedish imaginary. In this vision, they play a rather minor role in aggregating market demand and demand flexibility but do not seriously impact on the broader institutional set-up of the energy system with its power relations, governance structures and disempowered role of small-scale producers and users.

‘Passing the needle's eye’: configuring energy communities through law-making

While the discursive articulations about energy futures above very much reflect current energy system structures with a dominance of large-scale corporate actors and at best a marginal role for energy communities, similar dynamics can be observed in the development of legal provisions for energy communities. A main actor is the Energy Markets Inspectorate (Ei), a governmental agency responsible for regulations and supervision related to energy markets, and thus shaping central institutions of Sweden’s present and future energy system. Accordingly, they play a key role in transposing the CEP directives and in proposing how to introduce energy communities as a formal actor in Sweden. In a report to the Swedish government in 2020, they provided concrete suggestions for how to transpose the Clean Energy Package to Swedish law (see also Palm, 2021). The report is an excellent empirical avenue to explore how a certain notion of energy communities not only takes shape in broader policy discourses but also congeals in the nitty-gritty process of law-making (see also Huhta, 2022). Here, institutionalised policymaking becomes a conduit for the imagination of a future energy system in relation to energy communities. In addition to the report, interviews with civil servants at Ei have been conducted.

In an early mention of energy communities in their report, Ei assumes that such entities will not gain traction in the Swedish context and consequently will not have a significant role to play in the future energy system (Husblad et al., 2020). The disconnect between how energy communities are described in the CEP and in Swedish policy discussions can again be discerned. The report suggests that energy communities should be organised as economic associations ¹ and not be allowed to own and manage their own local grids (ibid). This contrasts with a preceding government official inquiry on grid concession processes, which argues that energy communities should be granted a special exception from concession legislation, since they must be allowed to own internal distribution grids to facilitate renewable energy sharing and utilisation of battery storage (SOU, 2019: 30). Concession rights entail monopoly on electricity distribution in a geographical area, and in practice primarily large, resourceful actors meet the necessary requirements. The government report clarifies that such configurations would complement the large-scale power grid, and that the legal exception from concession legislation would facilitate energy transformation (ibid). The report also caveats that such a legal exception might not be as cost-efficient as large-scale renewable electricity production but that it could contribute to achieving climate policy goals nonetheless (ibid). This underlines the need to align even a non-economic argument on grid concessions for energy communities with dominant techno-economic knowledge claims to be taken seriously.

An interviewee at Ei however stated that their suggestion is very much in line with the EU Commission's intentions with the CEP to increase acceptance of solar and wind power expansion (Interview Ei1). According to the interviewee, energy communities can be beneficial in certain settings, mainly for small-scale constellations of homeowners or tenants in residential buildings, e.g. to avoid taxation when feeding electricity into the grid but expressed some doubts regarding whether energy communities will become common in the future energy system: “we’ll see if it is so tempting to establish an energy community instead of solving it some other way” (Interview Ei1). The interviewee stated that it might be unlikely that “someone would bother to create such a specific organization”, rather proposing virtual power plants – digitally pooling renewable electricity production and trading it in the market – as a probable technical setup. This seems in line with the dominant imaginary of Sweden's energy future, favouring solutions more easily adaptable to the contemporary grid infrastructure and energy market setup (Envall, 2021; Wallsten and Parks, 2020). Another interviewee described how it was concluded in internal discussions initiated after receiving many questions related to virtual energy communities that there are no legal barriers for virtual energy sharing (Interview Ei2). This statement is illuminating for a restrictive line of reasoning in relation to regulatory change. Rather than acknowledging energy communities as a political ambition to make energy systems more democratic and thus looking for ways to support their implementation, the question is narrowly juridically framed before the background of current law. While no direct legal barriers exist, the suggestion in the aforementioned government official inquiry that energy communities should be able to own and operate grids illuminates apparent difficulties to align energy communities with contemporary energy system structures.

While the task of transposing EU directives clearly is complicated, Ei's policy proposal seems entirely aligned with the dominant socio-technical imaginary by being extremely restrictive with regulatory changes in relation to energy communities. There are several demands set upon member states in the REDII and EMD directives to facilitate energy communities, e.g. by ensuring equal participation for vulnerable groups such as low-income households and ensuring that relevant public authorities receive support to enable energy communities. In their report, Ei states that there are no risks for negative special treatment of vulnerable groups in their proposal to formalise energy communities, that it is unnecessary to further regulate in favour of vulnerable groups, and that there are no barriers for energy communities in the suggested form to produce, consume, share or sell renewable energy on the same terms as other (market) actors (Husblad et al., 2020: 347).

An interviewee conceded that perhaps a more encompassing ‘technical’ and ‘market’ analysis could have been made, but Ei's proposal is juridically in accordance with the demands of the directives (Interview Ei1). Further, the interviewee stated that in the consultation round following the policy proposal, most actors agreed with the suggestions. Such narrow legal positions along with suggestions for ‘reasonable’ and legally compatible configurations for energy communities such as virtual power plants or small-scale solutions within buildings are an excellent example of the politics of legal provisions, where goals such as community-building and democratic empowerment as expressed in CEP and by energy community proponents are not discursively rejected, but made more difficult or even blocked by the way legal provisions are formulated. Political goals in this case are not achieved through explicit deliberation but through promoting seemingly a-political legal fixes. The narrow legal position along with the assumption that energy communities will not become prevalent is part of enacting a dominant imaginary of Sweden's energy future without taking an explicit political position. The move at the same time suggests other solutions that are more easily adaptable to current grid and market infrastructure, such as virtual power plants, can be seen as backing up the legal position taken with a technopolitical solution consolidating the dominant Swedish energy imaginary.

Our analysis thus highlights how Ei's proposal on the transposition of CEP appears to follow the EU directives, but at the same time interprets them in the context of a ‘techno-regulatory imaginary’ (Rommetveit and van Dijk, 2022) which discursively constructs energy communities in line with an already existing infrastructure. This underlines the politics of imaginary formation since institutionalised policymaking contributes to enabling and constraining particular socio-material configurations. Energy communities are described to fit large-scale grid infrastructure where they can potentially provide energy system services and grid benefits, while their potential for reconfiguring power relations, e.g. between marginalised households and grid operators, is hardly mentioned and not supported by regulation. There is an evident gap between how energy communities are described in the CEP and how they are envisioned by key actors within institutionalised state energy policymaking. In the next section, we will explore in more depth how definitions of what energy communities are and should be able to do are not only following this dominant imaginary but are also contested in different arenas.

Struggles of defining energy communities

We will now zoom in three empirical arenas of ongoing struggles to define energy communities. First, we look into written responses to Ei:s policy proposal, and the articulations of various interviewees on energy communities and the policy proposal. Second, we focus on two energy communities under formation in Örebro and Gotland to provide examples of how these actors engage in processes of redefining energy communities through navigating technopolitical conditions of the dominant socio-technical imaginary. Finally, we explore definitional struggles playing out in the immediate aftermath of a regulatory change in late 2021, seemingly opening for sharing energy in low-voltage grids to an extent not previously allowed. Through these examples, it becomes clear that struggles to define energy communities are ongoing both in relation to institutionalised channels of policymaking, as well as through experiments ‘on the ground’, elucidating ongoing contestations over energy futures.

Critique of Ei:s policy proposal: a window into discursive struggles

Before being decided in parliament, suggestions for law texts such as those resulting from EU directives have to undergo a legally required consultation process giving various stakeholders the possibility to submit their opinion. Responses to Ei:s policy proposal have become one of the arenas of struggles about the implementation of energy communities in Sweden and make different visions of energy futures visible. As shown, energy communities resume a marginal position in Ei's proposal. An interviewed Ei-representative remarked that perhaps more could have been done in the proposal, but there was simply not enough time (Interview Ei1). Looking at the written responses, it is primarily the large energy companies and the transmission grid operator who are satisfied with the suggestions made, particularly that energy communities should not be allowed to own grids. Concession legislation stipulating who may own and operate a power grid is very restrictive in Sweden and currently constitutes a technopolitical arrangement that disadvantages smaller actors such as energy communities. This arrangement would continue under the proposed legislation. Several interviewees expressed the view that Ei had been very careful not to antagonise the dominant companies by proposing a definition of energy communities that would pose no threat to them. One interviewee suggested that Ei had ‘tiptoed’ around the large companies (Interview Lawyer1) and has left their powerful position intact.

The written responses to Ei's proposal also provide insights into the ways the dominant imaginary is contested by proponents of a stronger role for energy communities. Several of the written responses emphasise that the proposal is not based on a thorough and encompassing analysis as one would have expected. As the Regional Energy Agencies point out in their response letter, the role of public authorities in relation to energy communities is not properly addressed. They also criticise that the Swedish translation of energy communities only partially captures the meaning of the English term and suggest that the Swedish Energy Agency should be tasked with providing a clearer specification of the two types of energy communities mentioned in the CEP (Renewable Energy Communities and Citizen Energy Communities). Moreover, Ei:s policy proposal is heavily criticised for neglecting suggestions made in the aforementioned government official inquiry (SOU, 2019: 30), particularly that energy communities should be allowed to own their internal distribution grid. The only remaining option, if such ownership is blocked, are marketised arrangements such as virtual communities, which in consequence creates heavy disincentives due to tax regulations and thus high costs imposed on the communities. This conflict underlines how there are voices arguing for defining energy communities in a way deviating from the dominant imaginary.

Similarly, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) argue in their response letter that there is significant potential for energy communities to contribute to energy and climate transformation, but such potential risks being left untapped because of barriers left untouched in Ei's policy proposal. A thorough analysis of such barriers as well as instruments to facilitate energy communities is missing and the regulatory recommendations do not suffice to harness the potential contributions of energy communities to a more sustainable energy system, according to the EPA. The EPA lists several potential benefits of energy communities in relation to climate and energy transformation, such as enabling more actors to invest in renewable energy and related services, raising the acceptance of renewable energy, and increased justice by also enabling residents who are not home owners to invest in electricity production. This all goes against Ei's assumption that there would be no unnecessary barriers for energy communities, as community actors would have the same rights and responsibilities as any other energy market actor. The EPA further argues that Ei's proposal to define energy communities as a juridical person without accompanying regulatory change is not sufficient to promote and facilitate energy communities. Mirroring such concerns, an interviewee of the property owner federation (Fastighetsägarna) remarked that Ei's suggested way to introduce energy communities into regulation – essentially only by formally defining such actors – is not sufficient. The EPA ascribes energy communities a significant role for transforming the energy system, aligning it with climate policy goals, but states that such potential will not be realised automatically – thereby calling for a more thorough analysis of barriers as well as instruments to facilitate energy communities.

Other written responses similarly contest Ei's proposal and by extension the dominant socio-technical imaginary. Whereas some actors call for simplified rules for sharing energy, others argue that energy communities must be allowed to own and operate grids. The Energy Agency emphasises that the CEP demands an assessment of barriers and potentials to develop renewable energy communities and a framework to facilitate the development of such communities be developed – a task they would gladly take on themselves. Many written responses raise concerns in relation to a perceived ‘narrowness’ in Ei's policy proposal, which as we argue, closely follows the dominant, industry-driven socio-technical imaginary of Sweden's energy future. Interviews across the energy landscape mirror such concerns. One interviewee claimed that Ei too quickly jumps to conclusions based on seemingly groundless assumptions and a narrow juridical perspective, effectively writing off energy communities as relevant actors in the energy transition (Interview Lawyer1). Others highlight the lack of broader socio-political analysis and the considerable juridical and technical knowledge required to set up solar energy communities in particular (‘a deep and complicated jungle to navigate’).

A focus of critique is the rather formalistic approach of Ei which seems not to be interested in the potential of energy communities to achieve a more just and sustainable energy system: ‘Ei went straight into the juridical, and my view is that they are skillful juridically, but for them this seems to be about passing the eye of a needle rather than politically trying to assess what we can do about this to make it as good as possible for Sweden’ (Interview Austerland2). Since Ei did not provide different legal and organisational options, much potential would remain unfulfilled. Different organisational options – with specific regulatory frameworks – would help energy communities to deal more specifically with different types of problems: ‘As of now there is no framework, which makes [energy communities] very inaccessible. Essentially, it's a jungle of rules. You can, in practice, establish an energy community today without such a framework, but then instead of one coherent framework you have to consider 50 different laws. You have different corporate forms, concession rules, the electricity law, consumer laws. There are so many legislations, and for one individual, one citizen – what a job you have on your hands simply knowing where to begin’ (Interview Lawyer1). The interviewee continues that there are currently no institutions for energy community initiatives to turn to for support, making the soil to grow such initiatives exceedingly unfertile.

What these examples elucidate is how Ei's proposal to define energy communities is entirely in line with the dominant imaginary, pushing them towards a marginalised role aligned with contemporary industrial modern, large-scale infrastructures, with professionalised experts as prominent knowledge generators and centralised ownership. Consequently, the dominant imaginary appears to enclose the possibilities for energy communities to reconfigure the energy system in Sweden. An interviewee confirms these points: ‘Today these concession owners, those who own the grid, they have incredible power. It is very clearly stated in the regulations that you must regard them, that they must have their market share. And it's supposed to be fair competition but in practice it isn’t. No space is provided for others to own grids today /…/ And then the entire electricity system becomes very centralized (…)’ (Interview Lawyer1).

The responses to Ei's policy proposal elucidate two aspects of central importance for our analysis. First, they further underline how energy communities are incorporated into the dominant socio-technical imaginary's techno-economic frames with little attention paid to how such communities could shape energy futures beyond rationales of grid optimisation or cost-efficiency, similar to what Miller (2020) observes about the relation of imaginaries of sustainability and their technopolitical enactment in smart cities. Second, the examples also show how there is no definitive consensus about energy communities but an ongoing discursive struggle to define their roles and capacities. Essentially, these are political contestations over different visions of energy futures. Despite attempts to assimilate and pacify energy communities, these struggles resist an easy embedding within the dominant imaginary.

Redefining energy communities through technopolitics

As pointed out earlier, it is not only policy discourses and law-making processes which constitute arenas of contestation about the role of energy communities in an imagined future energy system. Important questions are also fought out regarding the concrete socio-material constellations of energy communities or by creating socio-technical conditions enabling and restricting different types of energy community solutions. This is what we call the arena of technopolitics, where essentially political goals and visions are promoted through means of technological configurations (Barry, 2013). Actors from our two case study energy communities have to navigate these technopolitical conditions to establish and maintain their communities.

The first of these communities is a sustainable urban development project, Tamarinden in Örebro, with ambitions of becoming a new ‘climate-smart’ and sustainable city district, primarily envisioned by way of producing, storing, and sharing renewable energy in new ways. Establishing an energy community is central to such ambitions, as expressed by a document specifying the energy and climate ambitions of Tamarinden signed by partners in the actor coalition. The actor coalition is diverse, with Örebro municipality and the public-owned housing provider Öbo occupying central positions together with the multinational energy firm E.ON. Several interviewees connected to Tamarinden expressed concerns mirroring those described previously, e.g. of how Ei's policy proposal lacks proper analysis of socio-political dimensions of energy communities. Similarly, on the island of Gotland, a group of people have initiated a grassroot initiative to establish a solar energy community under the heading Austerland Energi, which is our second case here. The setting is different from Tamarinden, with the envisioned configuration including 200 households scattered in a countryside area, a local farm and a local sewage plant connected to a solar PV-setup, and possibly diverse energy resources (rooftop PV, EV carpool, a wind turbine etc.) to produce, store and share electricity aided by a digital platform. Tamarinden is an example of an energy community initiative in a high-profile urban ‘climate-smart’ development project, whereas Austerland Energi represents a grassroot initiative in a peripheral countryside setting with low population density.

In both cases, early ambitions entailed establishing a local grid to physically connect the various components in the envisioned configurations and, e.g., jointly use electricity from rooftop PV, interviewees recounted. However, it soon became apparent in both cases that realising such ambitions would be no small feat. Interviewees describe several of the aforementioned barriers related to the material grid infrastructure and regulations, and the large energy companies who own and control much of this infrastructure. As pointed out earlier, contemporary Swedish concession legislation is not only complicated but tilted in favour of these energy companies. We conceptualise this as a technopolitical condition intertwined with the dominant socio-technical imaginary centring on large-scale electricity providers in control of the grid, constituting an example of how the imaginary is bound up in regulations and concrete technological configurations. In both cases, however, this did not cause the actors to give up on their plans: in Tamarinden, there are explicit ambitions of owning and operating both district heating and electricity infrastructure, while in Austerland options to share energy through a virtual solution is explored while emphasising local development. Thus, both energy communities under formation strive to establish energy communities deviating from the currently dominating arrangements, elucidating how struggles over energy futures play out through technopolitics and attempts to implement new socio-technical solutions which could pave the way to a different energy system.

A related area is the sophisticated techno-economic knowledge needed to set up measurable targets, carry out evaluations and calculate cost-efficiency of planned energy community initiatives. Defining which kind of knowledge and tools for assessment are required or appropriate is also closely related to the broader framings of the envisioned future energy system and can become a contested arena. In interviews and observations, it became clear how both initiatives sought to mobilise such calculative devices dominated by techno-economic thinking as instruments for both persuasion and legitimisation. In attempts to establish the two energy communities, measurable units such as expected power needs from the distribution grid or projected energy savings played an integral role for legitimising their initiatives and persuading grid operators as well as relevant governmental agencies or local politicians to approve of the project. For Austerland, the enrollment of a firm specialised in techno-economic optimisation modelling of decentralised energy systems constituted a crucial element. This modelling – a form of techno-economic knowledge practice – guided the material configuration of the energy community, while it was also used to legitimise the initiative towards the funding provider (the Energy Agency) and other actors in the energy system, or to persuade potential stakeholders and households. At the same time, requirements to conform with such models set conditions for how energy communities can be organised and operated. The importance of modelling for setting up the energy community shows how the favouring of certain (techno-economic) knowledge configurations over others (e.g., socio-political, justice-related) constitutes a technopolitical condition entangled with the dominant socio-technical imaginary (cf. Smith and Tidwell, 2016).

Interviewees described how in Tamarinden simulations of energy system performance and optimisation were undertaken in-house by the housing company Öbo at an early stage, and mobilised to legitimise the initiative and persuade various actors, including the municipality and the multinational energy company E.ON who owns the regional grid. Based on the simulations, Öbo argued that Tamarinden would be 50% more energy-efficient than the regular housing stock and that power distributed to the city district from the large-scale grid could be reduced by 30% (Interview Tamarinden7), a large amount in an area ridden by grid capacity problems. This argument clearly had a persuasive effect on politicians and civil servants in the municipality (Interview Tamarinden1-3). An interviewee at E.ON expressed however that ‘we want to see afterwards what this actually gave us, did it result in 30% reduced power demand and 50% reduction of supplied energy?’ The quote underlines how such calculative practices in effect constitute an important technopolitical condition for energy communities to navigate – in terms of being able to set up measurable targets, but then also in terms of being questioned and potentially held accountable by the grid owner (‘we will see’). Such technopolitics shapes the socio-technical configurations of energy communities by foregrounding techno-economic and managerial dimensions, possibly to the detriment of configurations more favourable to CEP ambitions such as community cohesion or democratisation but with more uncertainty about impacts on energy consumption and grid performance.

Öbo also decided to become active in the TSO's frequency regulation market, despite the complicated process of doing so, using existing housing stock with a similar technical setup as is envisioned in Tamarinden (Interview Tamarinden7). This was used in various presentations of Tamarinden in different contexts gathering stakeholders in community energy and again shedding light on how techno-economic knowledge resources are mobilised as legitimation. We regard the perceived necessity of mobilising such knowledge claims through calculative devices as an element of the dominant socio-technical imaginary, shaping the terrain for energy community initiatives to navigate. The technopolitical conditions of this terrain force the material configurations of Tamarinden and Austerland to better align with visions of large-scale grid infrastructure, the dominance of large energy companies, and specific market arrangements. ‘Buying into these conditions’, partially attempted by both communities, risks depoliticising contestations over energy futures and marginalises policy goals such as democratising energy systems.

Still, we can see how actors in both Austerland and Tamarinden attempt to create ‘wiggle room’ for themselves in relation to the prevailing conditions. In Austerland, a close cooperation with a Regional Energy Agency developed – entailing both assistance in practical matters, networking (e.g., connecting the actor coalition with the optimisation-modelling firm) and wider lobbying efforts to influence policymaking (Interview Energicentrum1; Interview Austerland5, 1). Not least finding a modelling firm specialised in decentralised energy configurations was an important step to legitimise alternative visions. Further, substantial effort was devoted to discursively foreground a future vision that departs significantly from the dominant energy imaginary. A recurrent theme in this story told through Austerland is that the energy community constitutes a ‘local manifestation of the Paris climate agreement’ (Interview Austerland5). Interviewees describe a different energy future, where energy communities contribute to local development as well as reduced ecological footprint, e.g. through shifting norms related to transportation through EV carpooling and reduced travelling, and ownership of the decentralised renewable energy system. This is explicitly motivated by justice concerns – an interviewee argued that we were currently exhausting resources as if we had several planets and needed to move away from that – which collective, locally anchored endeavours such as Austerland could aid in achieving. Further, the actor coalition in Austerland engaged in continuous dialogue with the regional grid owner GEAB, in effect negotiating their socio-technical configuration through attempts at persuading GEAB with promises to provide auxiliary services such as demand aggregation, load shifting etc.

Similarly, actors such as Öbo in Tamarinden attempt to tell a different story of Sweden's energy future, one centred around innovation where property owners become an active part in the energy system through energy communities. This story does not stray as far from the dominant imaginary as Austerland's, but it clearly differs in key aspects, imagining different power relations between actors in the energy system (with a more prominent role for property owners) as well as an increasingly decentralised grid infrastructure. The actors in Tamarinden have further engaged in more extensive lobbying than in Austerland, latching on to existing networks both within party politics and through resourceful ‘policy entrepreneurs’ (cf. Knaggård, 2015). Such efforts have led to meetings with the Minister for Energy, as well as internal negotiations within the Social Democratic party on a national level (Interview Tamarinden1, 7, 3).

The empirical examples elucidate how both Austerland and Tamarinden attempt to push the framework of what an energy community should be and do – thereby engaging in struggles to redefine energy communities by navigating the technopolitical conditions of the dominant imaginary. The struggles also have a material component in the sense that the actors attempt to construct infrastructure in both cases, even if these attempts are clashing with current technopolitical conditions. Concrete material expressions of alternative system configurations can constitute potent persuasion instruments to guide socio-technical change in alternative directions – highlighting potentially different energy system configurations (cf. Edwards and Bulkeley, 2017). As the actors in Austerland and Tamarinden navigate the technopolitical terrain shaped by the dominant socio-technical imaginary, they engage in struggles to redefine energy communities both through material means (constructing grids differently) and discursive means (telling different stories of energy futures).

Changing the playing field? Sudden regulatory change and interpretative privilege

In what constituted a surprise for many actors, in late 2021, the government changed concession legislation, effectively opening up to sharing energy on low-voltage grids between adjacent properties – something hitherto practically forbidden with very few exceptions (Interview Ei2; SFS, 2021: 976). In the wake of this sudden regulatory shift, several actors immediately mobilised support, thereby opening up an additional arena of contestation over energy communities. Fastighetsägarna, the property owner federation, organised a webinar on the topic of the regulatory shift where stakeholders such as regulators, property owners and energy companies were invited. They also very quickly published a handbook on how to interpret the new rules – an illuminating example of the fight over interpretative privilege in the wake of the new situation. The actors in Tamarinden and Austerland immediately prepared applications probing the changed regulations, demanding that the Energy Markets Inspectorate decide whether the suggested grid configuration and ownership model for connecting different electricity production units and different buildings was legally acceptable or not (Interview Tamarinden7; Interview Austerland5). Additional mobilisation through networks also commenced in both Tamarinden and Austerland, to use the window of opportunity to forward their positions and further influence policymaking.

In March 2022, the government published new legislation based on Ei's policy proposal, with additional regulations to follow. The bill states that no additional regulatory change will be necessary to accommodate the CEP demands and introduce energy communities as a formal actor (Prop., 2021/22: 153). The text also stipulates that if it turns out that there are barriers for energy communities to realise sustainability ambitions, this might be a case to introduce “special regulations” – but such regulatory change would have to be based on a thorough, broad political analysis of barriers (Prop., 2021/22: 153). This statement seemingly acknowledges some of the critique of a missing socio-political analysis of barriers for energy communities, as described previously, even if the bill itself follows Ei's proposal. These new pieces of legislation and the immediate mobilisation of energy community proponents bears witness to the still ongoing struggles over the legal implementation of energy communities as part of a broader fight over different imaginaries of energy futures.

Conclusion: technopolitics of the dominant socio-technical imaginary of Sweden's energy future

In this article, we have explored the socio-material struggles to define energy communities in Sweden in the wake of the transposition of the EU Clean Energy Package. What has become visible in this undertaking is the powerful influence of a dominant socio-technical imaginary – a collectively shared and institutionalised envisioned energy future, as proposed by Jasanoff and Kim (2015), for Sweden – on ongoing negotiations in the national law-making process. While energy communities in the CEP are embedded in an idea of empowerment of households and citizens in the energy system and a more just transition process, the dominant imaginary guiding the transposition into Swedish law had centralised energy supply, a continued strong position of incumbent utilities and a predominant orientation towards economic growth as its cornerstones. This imaginary and the juridical as well as technopolitical conditions entangled with it shape the terrain in which energy communities currently operate. Particular configurations of energy communities corresponding with ‘grid benefits’ and system optimisation appear to be preferred in the Swedish context. This imagines technical and organisational constellations of energy communities (providing flexible load to a centralised grid rather than being operated in a more autonomous way emphasising self-supply of energy), and thereby can be analysed as a form of ‘material politics’ (Barry, 2013).

There is an evident chasm between the ambitions articulated in the CEP directives in relation to energy communities, ambitions to which the Swedish government has signed up as well, and the practices of Swedish policymaking, underlining the firm grip the dominant imaginary has on the practices of lawmakers and established energy actors. As developed in the conceptual section, the socio-material implementation of energy communities through local grids and energy management devices is turned into a political terrain where central elements of our energy futures (along with many societal implications) are negotiated (von Schnitzler, 2013). An energy system building on decentralised, community-based units resonates with different social and power relations than a central electricity market dominated by a few incumbent actors, a relationship thoroughly analysed by Mitchell (2013). However, despite the historical sedimentation and institutionalisation of the dominant imaginary, this vision of an energy future for Sweden no longer goes uncontested and several arenas of struggle over the role and form of energy communities have emerged with the support of the new EU directives. Also in this case, it proved helpful to analyse such struggles not just as diverging interests of involved actors, but to highlight such fights over whether local grids or the sharing of energy are allowed or not as a techno-political terrain where contestations over energy and societal futures unfold.

We showed how in the policy proposal by Ei – the main institutional channel for transposing the CEP directives – energy communities were aligned with the dominant imaginary. This can be conceptualised as an attempt at purification and assimilation of the concept to disarm the radical transformative potential of energy communities through its incorporation into the techno-economic framework of the dominant imaginary, thereby attempting to depoliticise energy communities (cf. Paterson, 2021). It is depoliticising in the sense of actively attempting to neutralise the political elements of energy communities such as visions of democratisation, justice and citizen empowerment. There is without doubt a certain logic to the narrow juridical focus of Ei's proposal since the transposition of the CEP is a complex challenge, but not least in the written responses to the proposal and our interviews, it becomes clear that the proposal actively closes down avenues for reconfiguring the energy system in line with CEP ambitions. This highlights how struggles to define energy communities partly seem to be waged on the juridical chessboard, moved there by actors aligned with the dominant imaginary as an effective instrument to stifle new developments (cf. Easterling, 2016).

While energy communities clearly have the potential to contribute to a more socially and ecologically sustainable energy system, harnessing this potential is put at risk by aligning energy communities with existing energy system structures and imaginaries. Our empirical data show how technopolitical conditions intertwined with the dominant imaginary are a deterrent for energy communities as put forward in the CEP. The discrepancies between CEP ambitions and the way energy communities are taking shape in Sweden become visible through our theoretical approach of socio-technical imaginaries and their technopolitical dimension. Ei's proposal forwards particular socio-technical configurations of energy communities by facilitating technical arrangements aligned with the dominant imaginary, excluding many potential energy community configurations and actors with a stronger focus on democracy or justice. Here is where we can observe how imaginaries are shaped also in the technopolitical terrain, by way of setting up juridical preconditions (e.g., concession legislation) pre-formatting energy communities into particular socio-technical configurations which are no threat to the current dominance of a few large utilities and centralised energy system structures.

Through socio-material power struggles to (re)define energy communities playing out across different arenas, we also saw how the dominant imaginary was contested, both discursively (e.g., in state policymaking and response letters to proposed laws) and materially (e.g., in attempts at constructing power grids differently). This shows how energy communities can potentially contribute to reshaping the energy system with new actor constellations, unsettle sedimented power relations, recenter values and generate new types of knowledge claims. Despite an adversarial environment of the current energy system with its institutions and power relations, contestations over energy futures have flared up in relation to energy communities. Running counter to the dominant imaginary of Sweden's energy future, the way energy communities in Austerland and Tamarinden navigate and try to stretch current structures by attempting to establish different interpretations of the value of energy communities in the policy landscape, breathes new life into the politics of green transformation (cf. Scoones et al., 2015). Empirically, our analysis demonstrates how technopolitics provide a terrain for struggles over energy futures (von Schnitzler, 2013), as actors in these energy communities contest the dominant imaginary by attempting to construct power grids differently, shifting ownership relations over energy resources, mobilising technopolitical instruments such as calculative devices and crafting alternative stories of energy futures. Consequently, the combination of socio-technical imaginaries and technopolitics helps us see how there are different energy future visions shaped across the Swedish energy landscape, even if not all of them are equally visible in the public debate.

Conceptually, we see our main contribution in focusing the entanglement of socio-technical imaginaries with more ‘hidden’ processes of legal and technopolitical enactment. These enactments are not necessarily aligned with imaginaries put forward in policy discourse and can become an important arena for contesting imaginaries of desired futures. Energy futures are shaped as much by attempts at materially constructing grids differently as in consultation rounds over proposed new laws for regulating the energy market. Technopolitics can show how imaginaries are consolidated and contested across a variety of settings, by providing regulatory frameworks enabling particular infrastructural arrangements while constraining other possibilities, as much as in attempts by actor constellations to navigate the technopolitical terrain shaped by a dominant national imaginary.

Even though the dominant imaginary depicts energy transformation as a depoliticised, managerial undertaking, the struggle for energy communities does not entail the type of ‘anti-politics’ – the removal of human agency from the energy system – that Sadowski and Levenda (2020) observe in relation to smart energy systems. What we see is rather a dynamic of de- and repoliticisation playing out through socio-material struggles to define energy communities (Paterson, 2021), with the potential to loosen the firm future-making grip of the dominant imaginary. The struggles to define energy communities highlight that what actually is at stake in processes related to the transposition of the CEP is essentially different political ideas of how society should be organised. Energy communities possess the potential to challenge dominant future energy system visions and have the capacity to mobilise important allies at different levels of governance. However, the outcome of these contestations is still open and dominant social, legal and economic arrangements of the energy system are still highly unfavourable for energy communities. It remains an empirical question whether energy communities will be able to live up to the democratisation potential ascribed to them in the CEP or whether they will be assimilated by the dominant imaginary of Sweden’s energy future.

Highlights

• The EU Clean Energy Package and its provisions for strengthening energy communities has opened a new arena for contestations over energy futures.

• Energy futures are shaped both through discursive struggles within state policymaking channels and through technical arrangements and juridical provisions.

• Attempts are made to align energy communities with a dominant socio-technical imaginary of Sweden's energy future, emphasising system optimisation.

• Energy communities possess the potential to challenge dominant future energy system visions and have the capacity to mobilise allies at different levels of governance.

• Exploring imaginaries across the terrains of national policy discourse, processes of law-making and institutionalisation and technopolitics extends our understanding of contestations over energy futures.