ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the politics embedded in the shifting relationships around urban energy that took shape in Barcelona in the first decade of the new millennium. It provides a window into the spatial politics of challenging the status quo of centralized fossil fuel and nuclear-based energy. The chapter turns to charting the dynamics underlying the rise to prominence of solar technologies in Barcelona between 1998 and 2010. The historical fate of solar technologies more generally has been tied up with the geopolitics of the twentieth century in terms of inter-state competition, economic development and emerging global ecological concerns. Solar technologies are characterized by high upfront capital investment costs which adversely shape the economics and financial viability of these technologies. The chapter provides an exploration of two types of urban-based actors who were seeking to promote urban-scale solar technologies: the solar guerrillas, a set of non-governmental activists, and the municipal engineers.
