Obduracy and Change in Urban Transport—Understanding Competition Between Sustainable Fuels in Swedish Municipalities

Within the renewable transport transition, a number of alternative technologies have emerged creating competing visions of how to reduce fossil fuel dependence. This paper examines the dynamics of competing fuels in two Swedish municipalities where electric buses have emerged, threatening incumbent biogas-based bus systems. While in Linköping, actors are resistant to the promise of electrification, in Malmö the shift to electrify urban buses has already begun. Here, the theoretical perspectives of obduracy and sociotechnical imaginaries are used to analyze obduracy and change in Linköping and Malmö, showing how the local contexts of these two municipalities influence obduracy or willingness to change. In Linköping, perceived connections between the biogas-based bus system and local infrastructures of renewable waste management and organic food production cause actors to place biogas buses at the center of a sustainable future region, while in Malmö linkages to the gas network (which also distributes natural gas) cause actors to question the sustainability of the fuel in use and opens up the city to welcome new electric vehicle tests. These examples show how fuel alternatives interact with each other in the wider renewable energy transition.