There is currently an expansion of local energy initiatives, underpinned by the desire to reduce energyrelated carbon emissions and in recognition of the importance of the local arena to achieving such change. Much of the research on these initiatives has been framed by a conventional economic approach, identifying barriers, drivers and incentives to explain their emergence (or not). Here a new economic sociological approach is taken which sees markets as socio-materially constructed and points to the importance of tracing exchange flows and determining modalities of valuation for such exchanges. Artefacts or market devices are seen to play a particular role in connecting actors and technologies within coordinating institutional arrangements and offer the potential for making innovative projects conventional. These aspects are explored in four international case-studies from Wales, Sweden, Germany and USA, mapping relations, identifying exchange flows, pinpointing how artefacts coordinate and showing the multiple modalities of valuation involved in each case. Conclusions concerning the importance of negotiation against a market backdrop and rendering exchange flows more certain are drawn.
Funding
This paper is based on research undertaken under Sustainable
Urban Environments programme Phase 3 funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), [Grant number
EP/1002170/1].
History
School
Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering
Published in
Geoforum
Volume
59
Pages
1 - 11 (11)
Citation
RYDIN, Y. ... et al, 2015. The financial entanglements of local energy projects. Geoforum, 59, pp. 1 - 11.
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Publication date
2015
Notes
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Elsevier under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/