ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the challenges of retrofitting path-dependent, entrenched electricity systems to improve their sustainability. Significant sociopolitical challenges are entailed even in energy transformations that leave the centralized electricity system configuration largely intact. This chapter tells a theoretically inflected story about the evolution of the vision for a Mediterranean-wide electricity system, contributing to the academic literature on Desertec, which is extensive but lacks an overarching narrative and theoretical framework. It maps out the components of an energy vision and the processes and forces that shape it over time. Actors developed at least three different designs for a Mediterranean electricity system over eight years. The characteristics of the visions, including technological feasibility, societal benefits, and sustainability, evolved and were reframed in response to sociopolitical pressures and controversy. This chapter discusses generalizable issues that ought to be taken into account in the early stages of similar visions for regional, and even global, grid integration, including policy and institutional innovation in regulatory and grid management organizations, energy security and cybersecurity, and new price mechanisms.
