Community energies: Exploring the socio-political spatiality of energy transitions through the Clean Energy for Eternity campaign in New South Wales Australia

Abstract

This paper analyses the spatial and scalar dynamics of a community-based campaign called Clean Energy for Eternity (CEFE), which has successfully promoted the use of solar and wind power on the far south coast of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. In this article we deploy three different approaches to understanding the role of scale; namely locational, relational and strategic rescaling. For the past decade, multi-scalar interventions by CEFE have provided a platform for community energy generation projects, facilitated by the development of social infrastructure that engendered new ideas, interactions and potentials, engagement and participation. These interventions have transformed the region's multiple, multi-scalar geographies of community engagement, energy use and climate change. Analysing CEFE assists in thinking about the relational aspects of energy demand, supply and use, as well as the spatiality of political mobilisation. As a grassroots movement that subsequently tried to scale up and out its activities, CEFE also alerts us to the relational nature of both barriers and opportunities for any transition towards a low carbon economy. Perhaps most significantly, the example of CEFE demonstrates how existing notions of the geographies of energy in Australia can be challenged and transformed.