The myth
The idea that ‘small is beautiful’, originating from economist E.F. Schumacher, is highly influential within the environment movement, which often advocates for more localised and decentralised ways of organising society.2 This line of thinking has become prevalent within energy transition debates. Herman Scheer, the architect of the German ‘Energiewende’, argued that the transition to renewable energy implies a more distributed and localised way of life, with households and communities able to power themselves through small-scale solar generation. This, for Scheer, was to be celebrated: by decentralising energy, he believed that we could decentralise political power and create more community-oriented and democratic political forms.
Scheer’s ideology of energy localism has filtered into the way that most actors – from environmental activists to government and industry – have come to think about energy transition. Generating energy from the sun, wind and water opens up new possibilities for energy production to take place at much smaller scales than large fossil fuel infrastructure allows for: every household can have a solar panel on its roof, every neighbourhood can operate its own wind turbine.
Myriad different forms of localised energy initiative are proposed. Local energy communities owned and managed as cooperatives by their members are often seen as key. Energy communities see people banding together – usually within a specific locality – to invest in and run energy technologies and infrastructures collectively.
Alongside local energy communities, municipal energy initiatives are also positioned as key players. Municipal energy schemes see municipal government playing a more active role in any system, either as grid owners or through municipal-owned companies that invest in renewable generation and/or provide energy to households and businesses. Moreover, individual households are often positioned as ‘prosumers’: producers of electricity through small-scale renewable generating assets, as well as consumers.
For some, the decentralisation of the energy system heralds the end of the centralised grid. As such, large incumbent utility firms tend to be portrayed as conservative industry dinosaurs standing in the way of the transition. Indeed, many argue that a more decentralised energy system would be inherently democratising, taking control away from industry giants and putting power in the hands of people directly through forms of localised community and collective control and ownership.