ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates the productive power of an assemblage tool and to show how it opens up new analytical framings of the processes and practices of urban system-building. The empirical research was conducted as part of the Challenging Lock-in through Urban Energy Systems (CLUES) project, funded by the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council in the United Kingdom. CLUES aimed to critically assess the development of urban energy initiatives, including decentralized systems such as this case study, within the context of national decarbonization targets and urban sustainability goals. For the case study reported stakeholders in the Netherlands were interviewed as well as actors from a case study in Portsmouth, UK, who have also developed a seawater district heating system. As this case of a seawater district heating system illustrates, the image of a stable technological system, moulded and shaped into a final obdurate form by social and political interests is a narrative that conceals as much as it reveals.
