Five easy pieces: Legitimation at work in cases related to energy transitions

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of five energy transition cases by describing the questions posed to five authors to guide the flow of argument in their chapters and summarising case treatments with respect to accountability and legitimation. It links four proposed practices of legitimation with analytical takes on wide-ranging cases. The cases span urban energy transitions over time and space in Germany, forest and land conflicts over authority in Indonesia, urban climate targets based on carbon metrics in Norway, the modalities of Nordic electric mobility transitions, and biodiversity conservation and energy extraction in the USA. Pinpointing the relevance of each case to legitimation, this chapter explicates how questions of accountability are germane to how the energy transitions associated with these cases impact sustainability.