Power Over and Through Energy Futures: Constructing and Negotiating Energy Scenarios in the German Energy Transition

Sören Altstaedt

Will the energy supply of the future be organized through centralized large-scale energy production or through decentralized community energy? How we imagine the future of our energy systems is of pivotal sociopolitical importance in the German energy transition. Imagined energy futures guide organizational actors in the face of the uncertainties that the energy transition creates. Moreover, imagined futures also drive this fundamental transformation of the German economy. Thus, it is in the self-interest of organizations involved in this transformation to establish power over what constitutes legitimate energy futures in Germany, not least in order to influence the direction of the energy transition. The project addresses the question of how actors establish power over imagined energy futures, impacting what and whose imagined energy futures are deemed legitimate. Triangulating discourse analysis, semi-structured qualitative interviews, and participant observations, I will reconstruct how different economic, state, and civic organizations construct imagined energy futures and how they try to establish power relations over and through these future imaginations. This empirical project will contribute to understanding the sociologically still under-explored interactions between power and imagined futures.