Challengers in energy transitions beyond renewable energy cooperatives: community-owned electricity distribution cooperatives in Spain

Abstract

Over the last decade, grassroots challengers to the Spanish electricity regime have grown in number and diversity. But whilst ‘newer’ renewable actors have attracted increasing scholarly attention, ‘older’, affordability-oriented challengers remain under-studied, despite their evolution. Prompted by an interest in potential coalitions of challengers in Spain, we draw inspiration from the Multi-Level Perspective to explore how traditional, community-owned electricity distribution cooperatives ‘read’ the energy transition and act accordingly. Our analysis traces the evolution of one such cooperative, the Cooperativa Elèctrica d’Alginet (CEA), and draws on 16 interviews, secondary literature and media reports. We scrutinise how CEA frames changes in the landscape, windows of opportunity in the regime, and the evolution of challengers. Our key finding is a growing alignment of CEA with the frames espoused by the younger renewable cooperatives. This rapprochement invites further research about emerging political coalitions between extant and novel challengers in national electricity regimes.