Les intercommunalités et la transition énergétique ? Un savant mélange d’innovations et de recyclage institutionnel à l’œuvre dans la production d’énergies renouvelables

Local authorities in France have recently been granted competence to pursue action in the domain of renewable energy. They move into an interdependent group of actors regarding the administrative power and financing opportunities. In this article, we discuss the strategies and projects implemented by a diverse set of local authority groupings in France and highlight the different ways in which they have appropriated the issues and challenges of renewable energy. These intermunicipal entities (Établissement public de coopération intercommunale, EPCI) have different sociocultural and geographic configurations, and our study shows that their local public action is driven by different motivations. Renewable energy is a vector for development that can be utilized in various ways, sometimes to legitimate public energy policy in the territory, and in other instances to bring in revenue. The politics of territorial energy strategy are often narrowly bounded by the scope of the intermunicipal structure. This restricted focus makes it difficult to develop strategies spanning several territories, and in the long term could lead neighbouring territories to compete to attract investment. Some of the intermunicipal entities seek to widen their fields of action thanks to the consultation with other types of actors. The challenge is then to relate with different energy stakeholders in an multiscalar framework to govern their energy transition.