German Energy Co-operatives as Agents of Social Innovation (T10)

Transformation to sustainability requires changes in norms, values, and behavior that go beyond what the market and the state by themselves can achieve. In this context, the German Advisory Council on Global Change (2011) for... [ view full abstract ]

Transformation to sustainability requires changes in norms, values, and behavior that go beyond what the market and the state by themselves can achieve. In this context, the German Advisory Council on Global Change (2011) for example notes that worldwide “de-carbonization” cannot be achieved without crafting new types of “Social Contracts” between governments and an activated civil society. The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC 2014) stresses the role of cognition as well as experimentation on the part of individuals, communities, and institutions. In this connection we draw attention to social innovations as intentional processes by which citizen-actors aim to change social institutions (Bouchard 2013; Cajaiba-Santana 2013; European Union 2010, 2014, 2015). This paper confronts claims of an upcoming theory of social innovation with the reality of the German Energiewende (energy transformation). In the year 2015 in Germany 35% of production and 27% of electricity consumption stems from renewable energy sources like wind parks, photovoltaic cells and biogas plants. The German energy transformation process results from the combination of state policy with innovative citizen action. On the state’s part, a law granting generous feed-in tariffs (EEG) for renewables has speeded up the rate of green technology adoption. On the citizen side, fundamentally new types of citizen organizations have emerged in the energy sector. Examples are renewable-energy co-operatives that have gone from near zero to 973 in one decade. In our view, this development of a citizen-driven movement illustrates key dynamics of social innovation. In the paper, we analyze origins and the spread of energy co-operatives based on theory and new empirical findings. We claim that the development process of the new renewable-energy sector in Germany illustrates the important role of cognitive aspects of social innovation – the adoption of new ideas, norms, and values – and their interplay with technology adoption in the context of citizen co-construction and co-production of institutional policy. Further, we claim that the emergence and diffusion of energy co-operatives illustrate a typical life-cycle of innovation processes in an advanced industrial society from invention to diffusion and institutionalization. We draw conclusions regarding the future of the sector as well as what its experiences mean for social-innovation theory: As actors reached the limits of the diffusion process, as other actors reacted, and as the institutional environment changed, the energy co-ops have reached a new stage where they must re-invent, consolidate and regroup.