Multidimensionality and the multilevel perspective: Territory, scale, and networks in a failed demand-side energy transition in Australia

The multilevel perspective (MLP) has emerged as an influential framework for analyzing sustainable transitions. Whilst the MLP has recently incorporated valuable geographical perspectives this paper argues that more nuanced accounts of socio-spatial dimensions are still needed to explain how and why some regions miss opportunities for energy transitions. It does this through a study of the restructuring of the Victorian electricity system in Australia in the 1990s and the resulting failure to build demand side management into the energy market design and regulatory framework. The failure of the demand management niche requires a compelling explanation as to why, despite increasingly porous and seemingly unbounded flows of knowledge and capital and emergent actor networks, the territorial-scalar embeddedness of the electricity regime was reinforced. Drawing on geography literature the paper argues that a multidimensional analysis can do the following: address criticisms of the a-spatial and residual character of the landscape level; situate transitions within a geographical political economy context; and reveal the variations and semi-coherency of regimes shedding light on the degree of regime stability and the opportunities for niches to break through. This paper expands the conversation between theories of geographical political economy and sustainable transitions arguing that the geographies of capitalism and the state need to feature more than as a backdrop to socio-technical change, and instead should be brought directly into the MLP.