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This handbook offers a comprehensive transdisciplinary examination of the research and practices that constitute the emerging research agenda in energy democracy. With protests over fossil fuels and controversies over nuclear and renewable energy technologies, democratic ideals have contributed to an emerging social movement. Energy democracy captures this movement and addresses the issues of energy access, ownership, and participation at a time when there are expanding social, political, environmental, and economic demands on energy systems. This volume defines energy democracy as both a social movement and an academic area of study and examines it through a social science and humanities lens, explaining key concepts and reflecting state-of-the-art research. The collection is comprised of six parts: 1 Scalar Dimensions of Power and Governance in Energy Democracy 2 Discourses of Energy Democracy 3 Grassroots and Critical Modes of Action 4 Democratic and Participatory Principles 5 Energy Resource Tensions 6 Energy Democracies in Practice The vision of this handbook is explicitly transdisciplinary and global, including contributions from interdisciplinary international scholars and practitioners. The Routledge Handbook of Energy Democracy will be the premier source for all students and researchers interested in the field of energy, including policy, politics, transitions, access, justice, and public participation.

The near-unanimous consensus among climate scientists is that the massive burning of gas, oil, and coal is having cataclysmic impacts on our atmosphere and climate. These climate and environmental impacts are particularly magnified and debilitating for low-income communities and communities of color. Energy democracy tenders a response and joins the environmental and climate movement with broader movements for social and economic change in this country and around the world. Energy Democracy brings together racial, cultural, and generational perspectives to show what an alternative, democratized energy future can look like. The book will inspire others to take up the struggle to build the energy democracy movement.

Presenting cutting-edge research on the future of energy geopolitics, this visionary and provocative Research Agenda takes a hard look at the pressing issues faced by energy researchers in the new world (dis)order. This title contains one or more Open Access chapters.

Why are the economic interests and priorities of lower- and middle-class Americans so often ignored by the U.S. Congress, while the economic interests of the wealthiest are prioritized, often resulting in policies favorable to their interests? In Hijacking the Agenda, political scientists Christopher Witko, Jana Morgan, Nathan J. Kelly, and Peter K. Enns examine why Congress privileges the concerns of businesses and the wealthy over those of average Americans. They go beyond demonstrating that such economic bias exists to illuminate precisely how and why economic policy is so often skewed in favor of the rich. The authors analyze over 20 years of floor speeches by several hundred members of Congress to examine the influence of campaign contributions on how the national economic agenda is set in Congress. They find that legislators who received more money from business and professional associations were more likely to discuss the deficit and other upper-class priorities, while those who received more money from unions were more likely to discuss issues important to lower- and middle-class constituents, such as economic inequality and wages. This attention imbalance matters because issues discussed in Congress receive more direct legislative action, such as bill introductions and committee hearings. While unions use campaign contributions to push back against wealthy interests, spending by the wealthy dwarfs that of unions. The authors use case studies analyzing financial regulation and the minimum wage to demonstrate how the financial influence of the wealthy enables them to advance their economic agenda. In each case, the authors examine the balance of structural power, or the power that comes from a person or company’s position in the economy, and kinetic power, the power that comes from the ability to mobilize organizational and financial resources in the policy process. The authors show how big business uses its structural power and resources to effect policy change in Congress, as when the financial industry sought deregulation in the late 1990s, resulting in the passage of a bill eviscerating New Deal financial regulations. Likewise, when business interests want to preserve the policy status quo, it uses its power to keep issues off of the agenda, as when inflation eats into the minimum wage and its declining purchasing power leaves low-wage workers in poverty. Although groups representing lower- and middle-class interests, particularly unions, can use their resources to shape policy responses if conditions are right, they lack structural power and suffer significant resource disadvantages. As a result, wealthy interests have the upper hand in shaping the policy process, simply due to their pivotal position in the economy and the resulting perception that policies beneficial to business are beneficial for everyone. Hijacking the Agenda is an illuminating account of the way economic power operates through the congressional agenda and policy process to privilege the interests of the wealthy and marks a major step forward in our understanding of the politics of inequality.

A state-of-the-art account of what we know and do not know about the effects of digital technology on democracy.

"As integrated sociotechnical systems, renewable energy systems co-evolve with new social arrangements, as social institutions of the fossil-fuel era are transformed for an age of renewables. This research explores this proposition by examining the recent phenomenon of energy democracy in three ways: 1) by drawing out and critically engaging with the implicit theory underlying energy democracy 2) by assessing the ways energy democracy has or has not enabled policy changes, and 3) by examining energy democracy initiatives in practice to understand how renewable energy is currently put to work for social transformation.Decentralized energy systems such as those based on renewables offer greater flexibility and more readily organize and enable distributed political and economic power, and vice versa, a relationship described as distributed energy-politics. The research proceeds to identify a set of three goals and 26 intended outcomes for energy democracy and presents a descriptive summary of 22 policy instruments associated with an energy democracy agenda. An assessment of congruence among outcomes and instruments finds more attention given to reclaiming the energy sector and less to resisting dominant energy regimes. The final analysis finds a set of nine initiatives for energy democracy presently operating in eastern Canada and the northeastern United States. The research synthesizes a shared transition narrative among these initiatives, converging around commitments to high levels of renewables, public and local control over energy systems, and broad social change through energy transition. Three distinct types of energy democracy and their associated narratives are proposed as "local and regional communities," "public partnerships," and "social movements," reflecting differences related to problem framings, form and specificity of solutions, critical or oppositional stance, historical positioning, and scale, agency and mode of social organization. Together this research demonstrates that renewable energy systems can, and already do, work to change a fossil-fuel society, yet a transformative energy future requires ongoing sociopolitical mobilizations across multiple levels of change. This work implies that if greater technological change is desired, more attention needs to be given to the selection and stabilization of the corresponding institutions necessary for societies powered by renewable energy. " --