The limits to the urban within multi-scalar energy transitions: Agency, infrastructure and ownership in the UK and Germany

Helen Traill and Andrew Cumbers
Additional contact information
Helen Traill: University of Glasgow, UK
Andrew Cumbers: University of Glasgow, UK; University of Bonn, Germany

Urban Studies, 2025, vol. 62, issue 9, 1808-1825

Abstract: This article critically interrogates the over-emphasis upon urban solutions when considering complex and multi-scalar energy infrastructures that must transition to low-carbon intensity for a sustainable future. While urban actors can play an important role in energy transition, their interventions are riven with difficulties, and at times failure, as they encounter challenges of politics, capacity and agency in a broader and multi-scalar governance landscape. Drawing upon the comparative and variegated political economies of energy infrastructure governance in Germany and the UK, this article makes three critical arguments. Firstly, it contends that patterns of ownership of key infrastructures, particularly in the highly privatised context of the UK but also in Germany’s more diversified energy market, trouble urban-level interventions. Secondly, against a backdrop of post-financial crash austerity, we raise the issue of capacity at an urban level, principally concerning the financing and technical administration of urban infrastructural ‘solutions’. Thirdly, the entrenched politics of neoliberalisation, its multi-scalar articulations and in particular discourses of marketisation and competition, while distinct across the two contexts, shape the possibilities, imaginaries and support available for local-level change in complex infrastructures. The article points to differential urban capacities and governance conditions that require a greater degree of nuance in sustainability narratives, and a critical conversation around the need for multi-scalar coordination in energy transitions, in order to avert catastrophic climate breakdown.

Keywords: energy transition; infrastructure; multi-scalar governance; neoliberalism; remunicipalisation; èƒ½æº è½¬åž‹; 基础设施; å¤šå°ºåº¦æ²»ç †; 新自由主义; é‡ æ–°åœ°æ–¹è‡ªæ²»åŒ– (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00420980241228467 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:62:y:2025:i:9:p:1808-1825

DOI: 10.1177/00420980241228467

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Urban Studies from Urban Studies Journal Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().