Re-scaling IPE: local government, sustainable energy and change

Sustainable energy has emerged as a new area of policy, in part as a response to greater political acceptance of the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Local governments are understood to be potentially important actors here, but also as having been constrained in their political capacities by neoliberal political institutions and the centralised nature of energy systems. This paper combines insights from energy IPE, political geography, new institutionalism and socio-technical transitions to build a conceptual framework for analysing local sustainable energy policymaking in relation to a broad range of influencing factors. It explores the ways in which policy and material aspects of energy systems inter-relate; considers ways in which ideas, contestation and learning are fundamental to change; and understands local governments as actors in their own right rather than ‘takers’ of global or national rules. This approach recognises specific influences of embedded institutions and infrastructures over local policymaking, but also allows us to better comprehend the implications of political and energy re-scalings for their capacity to govern and to influence political debates at national and global levels. It concludes with a plea for IPE to take better account both of sector specifics as well as of the local scale.