Globally, nation states are exploring the potential of decentralised energy systems – or socio-technical imaginaries (STI) – for reducing carbon emissions and increasing energy security. Narratives about decentralised energy tout how the localisation of energy generation, distribution and consumption can achieve greater social justice outcomes. However, significant differences exist between bottom-up, community-led decentralised STI and Top-Down Decentralised STI (TDDSTI), with the latter being designed by project implementors in isolation of communities.
Past research shows how project implementors seek to legitimise TDDSTI in specific places using practices of emplacement, place-framing and place-making, yet little research has explored how community actors respond to these practices. This is the gap this paper addresses.
From a critical-spatial lens, we explore the local ‘politics’ of TDDSTI; focusing on how the place imaginaries held by community actors serve as lenses which refract responses to emplacement, place-framing and place-making a TDDSTI. We focus on one TDDSTI – ‘Zero Carbon Rugeley’ (ZCR). We triangulate five pieces of data: our subjective experience as project implementors for the community engagement aspects of the project, secondary research of project websites, community gatekeeper interviews, innovative ‘cultural animation’ workshops and social media engagement.
Analyses reveal how project implementors’ attempts to legitimise TDDSTI focus unequally on certain characteristics and are informed by generalisations about places, which miss important socio-spatial nuances in communities. Moreover, communities’ responses are shown to be divergent; shaped by different positive and negative associations to existing place imaginaries which underpin why their responses to the TDDSTI refract differently.