Politicised nexus thinking in practice: Integrating urban wastewater utilities into regional energy markets

Timothy Moss and Frank Hüesker
Additional contact information
Timothy Moss: Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany
Frank Hüesker: Technical University of Kaiserslautern, Germany

Urban Studies, 2019, vol. 56, issue 11, 2225-2241

Abstract: Infrastructures are key interfaces of urban resource use, connecting production to consumption, cities to their hinterland and energy to water and land use. They have, however, received scant attention in debates on nexus thinking in general, and the urban nexus in particular. Drawing on an emergent critical literature on the nexus in urban studies and science and technology studies, this article examines practices of (attempted) inter-sectoral infrastructure integration at the interface of urban wastewater treatment and regional energy provision in Germany. It analyses the nexus approaches and experiences of eight German cities / city-regions as so-called ‘flexibility providers’ in regional energy markets for electricity, gas and heating. It demonstrates how the practices of wastewater utilities operating in energy markets involve far more than technical adaptation, requiring in addition a major reordering of existing material, spatial and institutional configurations to both wastewater and energy systems. This is proving a deeply political process with important implications for our understanding of socio-technical transitions at the water-energy nexus.

Keywords: local politics; nexus; renewable energy; urban infrastructure; wastewater; 地方政治; è ”ç³»; å ¯å† ç”Ÿèƒ½æº; 城市基础设施; 废水 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098017735229 (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:56:y:2019:i:11:p:2225-2241

DOI: 10.1177/0042098017735229

Access Statistics for this article

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