Whose energy transition is it,anyway? Organisation and ownership of the Energiewende in villages,cities and regions

As one of the most ambitious national energy transition initiatives worldwide, the German Energiewende is attracting a huge amount of attention globally in both policy and research circles. The paper explores the implementation of Germany's energy transition through the lens of organisation and ownership in urban and regional contexts. Following a summary of the principal institutional challenges of the Energiewende at local and regional levels the paper develops a novel way of conceptualising the institutional to urban and regional energy transitions in terms of agency and power, ideas and discourse, and commons and ownership. This analytical heuristic is applied to a two-tier empirical study of the Berlin–Brandenburg region. The first tier involves a survey of the organisational landscape of energy infrastructures and services in cities, towns and villages in Brandenburg. The second tier comprises a case study of current, competing initiatives for (re-)gaining ownership of the power grid and utility in Berlin. The paper draws conclusions on the diverse and dynamic organisational responses to the Energiewende at the local level, what these tell us about urban and regional energy governance and how they are inspired by – or in opposition to – new forms of collective ownership resonant of recent debates on reclaiming the commons. It concludes with observations on how relational approaches to institutional research and the notion of the commons can guide and inspire future research on socio-technical transitions in general, and urban energy transitions in particular.     

Integrated hydro-economic assessment of restoration of the Alexander-Zeimar River (Israel-Palestinian Authority)

This paper examines hydro-economic aspects of the Alexander-Zeimar basin. The Alexander-Zeimar River is a transboundary river originating in the Palestinian Authority and flowing through Israel to the Mediterranean Sea. Since the 1950s, the river has been used as a sewage outlet. The major purpose of this study is to estimate the costs and benefits derived from a restoration plan, which has been in place in the river since the mid-1990s. A hydrological model combined with market and non-market valuation (travel cost method) techniques was used to estimate the condition of the situation before and after the restoration project was implemented. The total restoration plan was compared to alternative partial plans. Interestingly, a cost–benefit analysis on the different restoration options revealed that only a complete cleanup of the river results in a positive net benefit ($0.49–3.23 million annually).