Benoît Boutaud: ‘An energy model in transition? Centralism and decentralisation in the regulation of the electricity system’

The issue of the energy transition is now at the top of the political agenda. The aim of this thesis is to examine the emergence of a new electricity model, to identify its characteristics, and to determine whether it represents an alternative to the centralised model.

By combining three analytical perspectives – institutional, technological and territorial – she demonstrates that this centralised model has had its day. A series of changes has profoundly transformed the electricity system in terms of both its physical structure and its organisation: liberalisation, distributed generation, political decentralisation, etc. The new configuration that is emerging is hybrid. It is the result of tensions between, on the one hand, innovations bringing about significant socio-technical changes and, on the other, mechanisms of political-administrative centralisation and technical-economic concentration. The state has lost its hegemony but not its centrality, even as the sector has diversified (in terms of players and technologies) and electricity has become widespread throughout society (access to generation, legislative processes, etc.). Neither the EU’s thwarted rise in competence, nor liberalisation, nor the emergence of local authorities have completely undermined its ability to position itself at the centre of the sector’s regulation. Its approach is at once selective (withdrawal from day-to-day operations), inclusive (renewable energy, local authorities), diffuse (funding, R&D, legislation, etc.) and, at times, interventionist (shareholding, pricing, transmission and distribution networks, etc.).

In a liberal context, the State adapts through pragmatic reform of its activities and the controlled integration of alternative approaches. This ‘tamed liberalism’ corresponds to a decentralisation of public energy policy, within which local authorities are asserting themselves through a process that is both bottom-up and top-down. These local authorities are, on the one hand, primarily through the EPCIs and regional councils, establishing themselves as essential partners of the state in the implementation and management of a variety of sub-national processes and technical mechanisms.

On the other hand, they wish to assert themselves in this sector and have operational levers at their disposal to do so (concessions, planning, support for renewable energy, information, etc.). This process of taking ownership remains partial and uneven today, but represents a strong trend that is making the local level the new frontier for the sector, including for the State, which is adapting its administrative organisation to the regional level. A process of local authority empowerment, of a legal nature, is therefore underway, organised by the State and falling under the remit of autonomous energy management, which cannot be reduced to the development of energy production capacity. The new boundaries resulting from this empowerment lead to an arrangement of institutional territories that do not fundamentally call into question the national level or the role of the State. This hybrid configuration depends on the terms of production development, which are subject to technical and economic concentration mechanisms specific to the electricity grid industry, its context, and spatial and territorial logics dependent on infrastructural parameters. This is demonstrated by the counter-intuitive deployment of distributed generation, which takes the form of a hybrid centralised/decentralised model, resulting from the interaction between forms of control and specific socio-technical conditions (spatialisation, logics of scale, concentration of actors, etc.). The emerging configuration combines elements of disruption/decentralisation and continuity/centralisation. Given the significance of future developments – ICT, storage – this likely represents only one stage in a long journey towards a new energy model.

Members of the jury

• Sabine Barles (University of Paris I)
• Olivier Coutard (LATTS, PhD supervisor)
• Gilles Debizet (University of Grenoble Alpes)
• Jérôme Dubois (Aix-Marseille University)
• Alberto Pasanisi (EIFER)
• François-Mathieu Poupeau (LATTS).