Opposition to nuclear power was a focal point for pro-RE mobilization in both cases. They share a corporatist style of governance with powerful traditional utilities and economics ministries that until recently showed little interest in promoting renewable energy (RE) ( Haddad, 2010 Jacobsson & Lauber, 2006 Lipp, 2007). Germany’s transition began decades before Japan’s and is more ambitious, but the cases have important similarities. Our cases are Germany and Japan, two of the world’s largest economies. Our aim is to explore the role of local initiatives in creating path dependencies for successful energy transition in the face of resistance from entrenched incumbents. “Transition towns” and “plus-energy communities” have proliferated worldwide. Our focus in this article is on local-level renewable energy initiatives, which have become tools not only for energy security and economic benefits, but also for community building ( Seyfang & Haxeltine, 2012). Often they are forerunners and innovators in energy transition (Morris & Jungjohann, 2016 Ornetzeder & Rohracher, 2013 Toke, 2011).
Local citizens are not simply recipients of policy changes at higher levels of governance, however. Cooperation between community-level actors and governments is necessary in order for the transition to succeed. Local action plays an important role in the global transition to renewable energy sources. Our study demonstrates the interaction of political, economic/technological, and legitimation paths to energy transition and highlights the importance of the latter two. Although problems with grid technology have led to retrenchment in both cases, Japanese activists’ reliance on vertical networks has limited their ability to weather a backlash from national government and utility actors. German energy activists were more successful than their Japanese counterparts in expanding this space and creating positive feedbacks in part because they were able to build horizontal networks that anchored the energy transition firmly in local communities. In particular, we explore the role of local initiatives in securing “socio-political space” for the expansion of renewable energy and in embedding themselves in “ecosystems” of public and private institutions.
We use a process-tracing methodology based partly on interviews with local participants. Our article explores the contribution of local initiatives to the creation of path dependencies for energy transition in Germany and Japan in the face of resistance from entrenched incumbents at the national level.
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