The spatiality of Germany’s energy transition: Spatial aspects of a reconfiguration of an energy system

Abstract

While the technological, political and institutional aspects of Germany’s energy transition are widely featured in political and scientific debates, the spatial dimensions tend to be overlooked. Nevertheless, the interpretation of Germany’s energy transition as a spatial reconfiguration is an important one, because it is critical to understanding the opportunities and conflicts involved in implementing the German Energiewende on different scales (local, regional, national and supranational). To this end, the paper first presents different crucial aspects of the spatial reconfiguration of the energy sector such as the trend towards decentralization, the spatial differentiation between regions and the constitution of new action arenas. Secondly, these dimensions of the German energy transition will be systematically addressed by conceptualizing their socio-spatial relations with the help of the TPSN framework (territory, place, scale and network) by Bob Jessop, Martin Jones and Neil Brenner.