Flora Aubert: ‘Energy communities’ and everyday urban life. A comparative analysis of Germany, France and the United Kingdom

The development of renewable energy in urban areas is generating growing interest, both among professionals and the general public, in sharing locally generated energy. Achieving this objective often involves local energy initiatives.

Whilst the energy sector has previously sought to remain invisible within the urban landscape, the roll-out of such energy initiatives raises the question of how these projects are received by the urban fabric. In this thesis, we argue that these local energy initiatives contribute, in their own way, to bringing energy systems back into the urban landscape, as well as to reshaping its organisation and functioning.

The research is based on four case studies in three countries: Germany, France and the United Kingdom. The cases selected are the Colibres collaborative housing project in Forcalquier (France), the

The Klimakommune project in Saerbeck (Germany), the European Sensible electricity storage project in Nottingham (United Kingdom) and the Smartmagne collective self-consumption initiative in Marmagne (France). We are committed to understanding the making of these projects; that is to say, beyond the physical outcomes produced, we focus our analysis on the actors and the mechanisms of the action currently taking place.

The thesis presents three main findings. Whilst the term ‘energy community’ is used in both academic literature and national and European policy documents, we demonstrate that the concept of an ‘assembly’ is more appropriate for characterising the energy initiatives under consideration. Our subject of study is the relationship between actors (companies, researchers, residents’ groups, developers, local authorities, interest groups, etc.) and the technical and material elements of a specific energy project: ‘local and urban socio-energy assemblages’ (ASE-LU). Their links are not based on social or political affinities, but are generated by the pursuit of the project itself.

The various projects examined enable us to situate the effects produced within what we call the ‘ordinary urban fabric’. In other words, the cases observed—whose common objective can be described as the sharing of locally generated energy—have very little to do with large-scale development projects (ZACs, OINs, eco-neighbourhoods). Within this ordinary urban fabric, project leaders do not opt for socio-political confrontation to change regulations, laws and production conditions. Instead, they prefer to exploit the margins and loopholes left by the ordinary urban fabric to bring their project to fruition and transform it into a material and social reality.

Finally, we discuss a possible link between our case studies and the commons. ASE-LUs transcend the traditional distinctions (which shape the urban fabric) between property rights and rights of use, between the private and the public, and between the primacy of the public interest and the pursuit of partial or individual interests. They face the same challenges as urban and/or energy commons: legal obstacles, and the exploitation of loopholes and gaps. They give rise to social organisations and spatio-technical systems that challenge, at the very least, the traditional legal and social structures of both the energy sector and the urban fabric.

Members of the jury

• Xavier Bonnaud, Professor of Architecture at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris-La-Villette and the École Polytechnique, and co-supervisor of a PhD thesis
• Gilles Debizet, Senior Lecturer, Université Grenoble-Alpes, rapporteur
• Bernard Declève, professor at the Catholic University of Louvain, rapporteur
• Sinda Haouès-Jouve, Senior Lecturer, Toulouse Jean Jaurès University, examiner
• Sylvy Jaglin, lecturer at the University of Paris-Est, examiner
• Fanny Lopez, Senior Lecturer, Paris-Est School of Urban and Regional Architecture, examiner
• Florence Rudolf, Professor at the National Institute of Applied Sciences in Strasbourg, examiner
• Jean Sonnet, Technical Director at Omexom, VINCI Energies, guest speaker
• Taoufik Souami, lecturer at the University of Paris-Est, PhD supervisor