ABSTRACT
In the beginning of the 2000s, Germany was credited internationally for both an intense rollout of renewable energy generation and a “wave of remunicipalization,” meaning a widespread return of public ownership in energy infrastructures and utilities. In more than 200 municipalities, the local state has acquired energy grids and generation facilities, utilities that were often in corporate hands after privatization. But state ownership was not the only model in striving for a more democratic energy system: Even to a greater extent, the number of citizen-owned energy cooperatives has grown since the early 2000s. Based on fieldwork in the cities of Berlin and Hamburg, this chapter compares these two different models of ownership in energy systems, regarding their aims for a socioecological transformation and the envisioned organizational form for channeling participation and decisions. It concludes that while cooperatives ensure more direct participation of a socially select body of members, public utilities can serve as an institutional anchor for a scaling up social and ecological transformation of energy systems.
