Degrowth, energy democracy, technology and social-ecological relations: Discussing a localised energy system in Vaxjö, Sweden

Accepted Manuscript Degrowth, energy democracy, technology and social-ecological relations: Discussing a localised energy system in Vaxjö, Sweden Cristián Alarcón Ferrari, Constanza Chartier PII:

S0959-6526(17)31040-5

DOI:

10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.05.100

Reference:

JCLP 9639

To appear in:

Journal of Cleaner Production

Received Date: 10 February 2016 Revised Date:

18 May 2017

Accepted Date: 19 May 2017

Please cite this article as: Alarcón Ferrari Cristiá, Chartier C, Degrowth, energy democracy, technology and social-ecological relations: Discussing a localised energy system in Vaxjö, Sweden, Journal of Cleaner Production (2017), doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.05.100. This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.

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Degrowth, energy democracy, technology and socialecological relations: discussing a localised energy system in Vaxjö, Sweden

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Cristián Alarcón Ferrari1

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Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano, Santiago, Chile

Constanza Chartier

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Master's student, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden

Abstract

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This paper offers a combined theoretical and empirical assessment of energy democracy and degrowth in relation to the case study of a city’s municipally-owned energy company in Sweden. Energy democracy is a fairly new concept and is a normative proposal that aims at articulating prospects for reduction of consumption, resource efficiency, use of renewable sources of energy and community empowerment. Though degrowth and energy democracy have similar goals and orientation, a combined analysis of both normative proposals remains underdeveloped. The focus on energy democracy serves us to articulate a deeper discussion on how technology, energy use and sustainability challenges interplay with definitions and meanings of degrowth vis-à-vis processes of capital accumulation. Empirically, we use the case of a municipality-based project of energy extraction and distribution in Sweden to discuss degrowth and energy democracy perspectives in this context. Theoretically, we develop insights from critical theories of technology. A main conclusion of the paper is that prospects for energy democracy and degrowth are limited in the energy project approached in the paper as it is based on the use of forest resources- a contested resource in the area and also because this project assumes the development of economic processes oriented towards economic growth within the framework of capital accumulation.

1 First and corresponding author: Tel.: +56 2 787 8225. E-mail address: [email protected]

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT Introduction

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During November 2015 and in the context of the COP21 UN climate summit to be held in Paris that year, the British newspaper The Guardian published a piece under the title What can the world learn from Växjö, Europe's self-styled greenest city?. The Guardian’s report informed about the political dimensions of the efforts of Växjö, a city located in the south of Sweden, which “became the first in the world to declare its intention to become fossil-fuel free” (Slavin, 2015). To achieve this goal, the municipality has put important efforts into developing an alternative energy project which, as the picture below shows, is to an important degree based on forest resources. The municipality also aims at providing infrastructure for cycling and vegetarian options at schools, among other measures. The Guardian´s report closes by highlighting some sources of resistance to what the report’s author defined in terms of “Växjö’s centrally planned green revolution” (Slavin, 2015). In focusing on the making of this green revolution, the report highlighted that much about Växjö’s approach to energy had to do with the political will in the city, sustainability concerns and a developed technological system for energy use.

Picture 1: reproduced from The Guardian

We have chosen this piece of media information in order to introduce our contribution to the discussion on the relations between degrowth and technology, as our empirical case revolves precisely around the municipally-owned energy company referred to above. In doing so, we attempt to link a discussion on degrowth and technology to the

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discussion on energy democracy. Degrowth and energy democracy are novel approaches to sustainability questions, and both propose a normative vision on how economic activities and their energy foundations should be re-organised to face both social and ecological problems and crises rooted in the economic logics of capitalism. In doing so, both approaches call attention to existing alternatives, their potential to be scaled up and the politics surrounding such alternatives. Within this context, we argue, there exists the theoretical need to deepen a critical approach to technology.

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The municipally-owned energy company we have approached in this paper represents an interesting case of a localised energy system which also combines important political processes anchored on a municipality´s political view on democracy and sustainability. The case of Växjö is situated among a larger process of transformation of the energy system in Sweden, particularly in relation to heating energy. This process is described by Di Lucia and Ericsson (2014), who analysed this transformation and observed that the plant in Växjö was the first large combined heat and power plant to convert to biomass in 1980 (Di Lucia and Ericsson, 2014). Thus, we argue that to analyse a localised energy system like this, which shows a process of local politicising of energy alternatives implying interaction with technological alternatives, is a relevant case to approach potential paths for degrowth and energy democracy in cases where neither degrowth nor energy democracy have been laid out as explicit goals. In other words, we are attempting here to analyse local material and discursive practices on energy use which could be understood as potential practices leading to degrowth, energy democracy and alternative meanings for technology. In using the case of a localised system of energy extraction and use in Växjö, our paper aims at reconstructing this case to theoretically and empirically analyse its potential for degrowth, energy democracy and alternative technologies. As the work of Kunze and Becker shows (2015), analysing alternative forms of energy provision from the perspective of degrowth and alternative political processes can give important insights into how a degrowth process can work in practice. In doing so, Kunze and Becker conclude that what they conceptualise in terms of collective and politically motivated renewable energy projects can be seen as the initiation of degrowth since they “reduce the per capita energy consumption and integrate ecological principles into their business practice” (2015, p. 435) We will guide our inquiry in order to provide answers to the following question: does the localised energy system and the ownership of an energy company by the municipality in Växjö, Sweden, provide a technological alternative and a potential path for energy democracy and degrowth?. In posing this question, we conceive energy democracy as a potential particular process in a general quest for degrowth. Furthermore, this question allows us to theoretically approach possibilities and constrains for degrowth and energy democracy as processes embedded in social-ecological relations and illustrate it with a case study. Therefore, we theoretically conceive degrowth practices as potential articulations of wider social-ecological relations in a process including the production of discourses in relation to alternative political projects for energy use at the local level. Within this context,

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we attempt to problematise views on technology in the context of capitalism and we will undertake such a task by drawing attention to a number of theoretical insights developed within what we widely refer to as critical theory of society. Thus, the paper will explore meanings of degrowth and energy democracy and will then elaborate on a number of theoretical insights from a critical theorising of technology and capitalism. In doing so, we will refer to what we understand as social-ecological relations, namely those material and communicative relations where, we argue, humans and their social organisations become constant parts of ecosystems and use what is produced in ecosystems, thereby transforming and reshaping ecosystems at both material and communicative levels. Thus, the paper will use insights from Critical Discourse Analysis to specifically approach discursive and nondiscursive elements of our case study.

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To close this introduction, we wish to caution the reader that the case study we have chosen here has not been chosen because we believe this is a case where energy democracy and degrowth can necessarily be observed, but because this is a case where, we argue, potentials for certain meanings of energy democracy, degrowth and technology can be seen and analysed.

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The paper is divided into five parts. In part 1, we offer a brief literature review focused on conceptualisations of degrowth and energy democracy. Within this context, we explore the links between the two bodies of literature and critically assess them. In part 2, we will bring perspectives on technology developed within different versions of critical theory. This will be used to problematise certain assumptions about technology in the light of sustainability goals and the potential role of degrowth and energy democracy in this context. In part 3, we present the methodological orientations for the analysis of our empirical material and we explain here our use of insights from Critical Discourse Analysis and the use of interviews and texts in relation to the case study. In part 4, we present the case study of the municipally-owned plant in the city of Växjö, Sweden. Finally, in part 5, we present a discussion focused on the overall question of technology, degrowth and energy democracy and elaborate conclusions in this regard.

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT Part 1: A focused literature review: linking, and problematising, degrowth and energy democracy relations

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While degrowth and energy democracy, as novel approaches to sustainability questions, have similar goals and orientation, a combined analysis of both normative proposals remains underdeveloped. In what follows, we attempt to link and problematise understandings of degrowth and energy democracy with the aim of critically examining technology in the context of possible paths for degrowth and energy democracy. In doing so, we conceptually approach energy democracy as a crucial but more specific moment in a process of degrowth. Here, the ways we approach technology play a crucial role and thus our literature review focuses on degrowth and energy democracy, and their relations, and will be followed by presenting insights from a critical theorising of technology. 1.1. On degrowth

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In linking and problematising degrowth and energy democracy relations, we start by noting that in the introduction to a previous special issue on degrowth in this Journal of Cleaner Production, Schneider et al. (2010) offered important approaches to defining meanings of degrowth. Following that contribution to the discussion on degrowth, we can highlight here first that degrowth is presented as a sustainable alternative in which production and consumption can be transformed in order to increase human well-being and at the same time it can enhance ecological conditions at local and global levels. Secondly, the degrowth idea is clearly presented as an alternative to economic paradigms where increasing growth of production and consumption are seen as markers of development. In doing so, a critique of views on sustainable development that are based on continuous economic growth also has much to do with keeping certain existing economic activities, such as for example small and medium scale economic activities. Thirdly, and in a degrowth perspective, the idea of technological and knowledge progress is understood in the context of possibilities for redirecting technology from more to better technology and a main idea articulating the meaning of degrowth here sees this in terms of a social choice that should not be imposed. On the contrary, here degrowth is seen as a way to decentralise and deepen democratic institutions and re-politicise the economy. In this case, we see quite an encompassing view of degrowth where an alternative view of technology is an important component of the very idea of degrowth. One of the main points here is that there is a view of technology along the idea of degrowth that is connected to the political sphere where degrowth is linked to normative ideas of democracy. In the terms of these authors: “The second source of degrowth is the quest for democracy, the aspiration to determine our economic and social system, breaking the close link among the political system, the technological system, the education and information system, and short-term economic interests […]”(Schneider et al., 2010, p. 512).

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As we can observe here, the quest for democracy through degrowth is also a quest for another meaning for technology. A similar view is shared in other contributions to the task of giving a meaning to degrowth which have also taken the question of technology as the centre of interest. For example, in Demaria et al. (2013), the question of technology vis-à-vis degrowth appears in terms of the need for less technology, where the example that is used to argue in this regard focuses on households becoming more egalitarian and transcending the division of labour between men and women (Demaria et al., 2013). In this case, and by referring to gender dimensions of degrowth, there is the implicit aim of proposing a sustainable degrowth where less technology is used and this is combined with reduced dependence on technology within households. These two mentions of the question of technology highlighted previously contain both a partial critique and also a positive appropriation of the role of technology within the prospects of degrowth. However, one can also see that the view on technology arising from this assessment tends to be static. This happens, for example, when it is implicitly assumed that reduced dependence on technology is needed to achieve more egalitarian divisions of labour. Such assessments open the scope for a more critical approach to the whole question of technology within the degrowth idea, which can allow a deeper understanding of the question concerning democratisation and technology. In doing so, we would also be able to better distinguish between the analytic dimensions of the technology-democracy relations and the normative dimensions of this relation in a degrowth perspective. This wider concern with technology can be observed in part of the literature that is frequently used in discussions on degrowth. For example, the critique of technology that was put forward by Ivan Illich is commonly used within the degrowth literature to point at the damaging effect of technological development on the development of societies. Here the influence of Illich in Serge Latouche, an influential writer within the degrowth literature, becomes an important moment to be looked at. For example, in the terms of Latouche, the project of degrowth was formed in the context of an “awakening to the ecological crises” and “the school of criticism of technology and development” (Latouche, 2010, p. 520).

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In turn, we can read how Illich relativises the critique of technology and moves into arguing for a radicalisation of technology when he states that in a convivial society, “[…] the protection of equity in the exercise of personal liberties would be the predominant concern of a society based on radical technology: science and technique at the service of a more effective use-value generation” (Illich, 1978, p.94). The previous quotations show that one fundamental aspect of thinking prospects for degrowth is the relation between a critique and a re-assessment of contemporary and capitalist technology. Within this context, the degrowth literature has placed important emphasis on energy questions, and the fundamental energy dimensions of degrowth have been correctly highlighted in the recent publication Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era, where we read that a degrowth society means “[…] different activities, different forms and uses of energy, different relations, different gender roles, different

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT allocations of time between paid and non-paid work, different relations with the non-human world” (Kallis et al., 2014, p. 4).

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Yet, as Quilley (2013) argues, an important challenge to ideas of degrowth emerges from the conception of energy one links to the idea of degrowth. For him, “[…] despite the fact that the term ‘decroissance’ was formulated in the translation of GeorgescuRoegen’s seminal book on the entropic basis for economics (1971 – Fabrice 2008: 24), the degrowth literature avoids the very difficult problem of the extent to which this articulation is intrinsically dependent on energy throughput” (2013, p.277). For Quilley, this theoretical problem implies a lack in the degrowth literature and by pointing at Kallis’ work, he claims that “[...]there is very little recognition of the complex constraints and trade-offs between societal metabolism and the broader social and cultural fabric. There is no sense, for instance, that democracy or social liberalism come with a thermodynamic price tag” (2013, p. 277).

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The points outlined by Quilley above concern the very basic ideas of conceptualising the relation between energy and democracy in relation to degrowth. This important point is crucial to the literature on degrowth which has made important efforts to address questions of democracy and energy (see for example Sorman and Giampietro 2013 on energy; Romano, 2012 and Asara et al. 2013 on democracy; and van Griethuysen 2010, Boonstra and Joose, 2013 and D’Alisa et al. 2014 on the wider terms of the social prospects of a degrowth alternative). Yet, important practical and theoretical questions remain open and there is a need to more deeply conceptualise and problematise the relations between energy and democracy in this context. For this reason, a focus on proposals for energy democracy in relation to perspectives on degrowth appears to be an important conceptual task. 1.2. On energy democracy

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The need to conceptualise the relations between energy and democracy in new ways has been a central motive within the energy democracy literature and the use of the term energy democracy has run in parallel to discussions around the meanings of degrowth. In what follows, we will briefly review relevant literature on energy democracy to connect this literature with a degrowth perspective. Within the context of our effort to link energy democracy and degrowth, it is important to note that in his introductory paper to the 2013 conference Energy democracy? A socio-ecological transformation in the area of energy coorganised by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Ulrich Brand observed that debates on degrowth can provide inportant inputs for the debates on social transformation since “[…] emancipatory alternatives probably need to be implemented against the political and economic interests of the elites; but also aim to shape the direct interests of many people in the Global North and the middle-classes in the Global South”. (Brand, 2013, 2013, p. 10). When it comes to energy democracy, we can clearly see how the concept has been put forward in the work of two different activist groups. One group is formed by labour unions and scholars cooperating with such unions, who have also engaged in ecological questions,

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while another group is the cooperative movement which has also engaged in socialecological questions in the context of expanding environmental crises. Two important contributions in this context can serve us to map how cooperatives and trade unions have taken the question of energy democracy to frame an analytical and normative proposal that can serve to illuminate possible areas of political action. The report produced in 2013 by Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (Sweeney, 2013) has defined energy democracy in the terms of “[…] a decisive shift in power towards workers, communities and the public...” implying a “[…] transfer of resources, capital and infrastructure from private hands to a democratically controlled public sector...” (Sweeney, 2013, p. ii). In elaborating on the goals for energy democracy, this report argues that energy democracy is a path to a new energy system which among other goals can bring protection to workers’ rights and provide stable jobs; be responsive to the needs of communities; provide environmentally sustainable methods of energy extraction, transport and use; reduce emissions and help end energy poverty globally (Sweeney, 2013, p. iii). The report continues by critically approaching current dynamics of capitalist appropriation of resources and capital’s need for energy sources. In this regard, the report highlights that current shifts in energy provision usually labelled as green transition mean in fact the reproduction of capitalism as an unsustainable economy, and that approaches to confront environmental problems that are based on market mechanisms and the power of corporations have failed and promote false solutions to environmental problems. Thus, it is proposed that the discourse of energy democracy should promote real solutions and also confront economic and environmental crises as two sides of the same coin (see Sweeney, 2013, p. 3). Here, the critique and contestation of neoliberal capitalism and the position of energy companies and corporations is one of the basic points articulating the idea of energy democracy (Sweeney, 2015).

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As mentioned earlier, another important group putting forward arguments for energy democracy, and trying to materialise them, is part of the cooperative movements in Europe. For REScoop, the European Federation of Renewable Energy Cooperatives, energy democracy should operate in a context where according to this movement, decreasing prices and increasing self-consumption have put in motion an energy transition. The argument put forward by REScoop (2015) is that this energy transition leads us from energy based on fossil and nuclear fuels to renewable energy sources, and from a system where energy is generated centrally to a more efficient system where energy is obtained at the location where it is consumed; in only the needed amounts and close to the consumer. Also, this would mean a movement “[…] from a top-down system in the hands of a few large energy companies to an ‘internet’ of millions of ‘prosumers’, consumers that also produce, for example with photovoltaic panels” (REScoop, 2015, p. 35). Here, a crucial role is given to citizens and their capacity to actively participate and define the terms of the current energy transitions. Here energy cooperatives would allow citizens to participate in the creation of democratic energy systems. This political dimension concerning the meaning of energy democracy within this energy transition would also mean an alternative approach to policies concerning energy (REScoop, 2015, p. 36). In elaborating the arguments for energy

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As seen above, the term energy democracy aims at combining a clear political agenda around energy and a search for actors that can articulate the praxis of energy democracy. When searching for practical views on energy democracy, Kunze and Becker (2014) developed four criteria to identify what can distinguish energy democracy in relevant energy projects in Europe. These criteria are 1) property; 2) democracy and participation; 3) surplus value and employment, and; 4) ecology and sufficiency. Kunze and Becker’s study concluded that none of the case studies under their research was able to satisfy all criteria conceptualising energy democracy. In addition, one of the important issues raised by Kunze and Becker refers to Latouche’s ideas on post-growth and they argue that: “Post-growth as a concept does not imply that all sectors of the economy need to shrink. Growth in selected fields is actually required to transition to a post-growth society” (Kunze and Becker, 2014, p.52). In considering that in the context of energy democracy, and by extension, in the context of degrowth, some fields of the economy still need to grow, and taking into account that a fundamental aspect of growth in capitalist societies is connected to technology, an important theoretical and empirical problem for degrowth and energy democracy arises: as most technology in current capitalist systems is capitalist-driven technology, the process of developing and using technologies in the context of normative struggles for degrowth and energy democracy leads to the crucial theoretical question of how to approach the relation between capitalism, its social-ecological relations and technology. Thus, possible paths of degrowth and energy democracy are linked to a general problematisation of technology in the context of capitalism. Thus, and though it is clear that the conceptual and material approaches to degrowth and energy democracy can be seen in productive ways as contributions to the envisioning of alternatives to a capitalist-centric form of dealing with energy and economic well-being, important conceptual and practical questions concerning technology arise and deserve more theoretical and empirical attention. Here, we argue, the conceptualisation of degrowth and energy democracy can gain important insights from a critical theory of technology in capitalism. 2. Technology within a critical theorising of society The work of Marx and Adorno offers us some basic insights on technology within a critical theory of society and capital, and poses important points for analysing technology in the context of a critique of capitalism (for important works on this regard see Rosenberg, 1982; Wendling, 2009; Krakauer, 1998). Here, two important aspects of this kind of theorising should be kept in mind. First, for these authors, awareness of the conceptuality of capitalism and the processes through which concepts are created under capitalism is an essential aspect of analysing and criticising capitalism. Secondly, the way of dealing with historically specific relations means that historical reconstruction is part of the process of

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conceptualising technology and the relations between technology and other social processes. A main discussion within this context concerns the question about the supposed neutrality of technology and questions pertaining to how technology becomes immersed in, or is part of, ideas and processes of capitalism. Andrew Feenberg has articulated a view that conceives technology as “one of the major sources of public power in modern societies” (1995, p.3) where he also distinguishes the existence of technological hegemony in the sense that “Technologies are selected by the dominant interests from among many possible configurations”(2001, p. 87). In turn Feenberg has offered a critique concerning the supposed neutrality of technology. In doing so, he has elaborated on what he understands as the ambivalence of technology. In Feenberg’s terms, technology is ambivalent because “...there is no unique correlation between technological advance and the distribution of social power.” For Feenberg, two principles interacts here. First, the principle of conservation of hierarchy means that social hierarchy can generally be preserved and reproduced as new technology is introduced. This principle would explain the “continuity of power in advanced capitalist societies”, which would be possible by “[...]technocratic strategies of modernization despite enormous technical changes. Second, Feenberg conceives the principle of democratic rationalization, which would mean that “[…] new technology can also be used to undermine the existing social hierarchy or to force it to meet needs it has ignored. This principle explains the technical initiatives that often accompany the structural reforms pursued by union, environmental, and other social movements” (2001, p. 76)

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The idea of the ambivalence of technology can serve to look at how technology is placed in the theoretical configurations elaborated by Marx and Adorno. In Volume I of Capital, and more specifically in the chapter on machinery, which is a chapter on technology, Marx highlighted the possibility of workers giving technology other meanings beyond the limits of capital (Marx, 1990 [1867]). This does not mean that technology will continue being the same under other social relations, because what is precisely at stake here is the social meaning of technology and the social purposes of technology. Thus, in his analysis of how machinery became a fundamental aspect of modern capitalism, Marx conceived of the possibility of using technology in other social systems. The idea of using and appropriating technologies created within capitalism and using them within another social framework has provided material for a fundamental discussion on the understanding of forces of production and relations of production. As David Harvey observes, there is a deep connection between how Marx dialectically understands changes in the relations between instruments of labour and thereby social relations and technology:“The implication is that transformation in our instruments of labor has consequences for our social relations and vice versa; that as our social relations change, so our technology must change, and as our technology changes, so our social relations change” (2010, p. 117). For Harvey, this means that when taking Marx’s theory of technology/productive forces, we should understand how the relations between machinery and organisational forms are developed (p.171). Recently, Nick and Williams (2015) have attempted to think a post-capitalist future where the idea of technological

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optimism creates conditions to argue that available technology, such as for example those technologies that allow the automatisation of production, would mean a situation where we can be liberated from work and leave machines to do human work. Here it is argued that liberating current technologies would decouple technologies from control and exploitation and would lead to the expansion of freedom. Concerning important environmental matters, it is also argued that today capitalism hampers the potential of major technological projects, such as for example the decarbonisation of the economy (2015, Conclusions). What is problematic in this account of technology, and the proposed use of technology in this context, is that there is no proper concern with technologies that depend intrinsically on available sources of energy. Yet, such technologies should be analysed both in terms of their future post-capitalist use and equally in terms of the entirety of their social-ecological dimensions. When such analysis is avoided, this kind of thinking seems to be unable to incorporate fundamental dimensions of the social-ecological crises we have today.

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A crucial point in this context is that fundamental social-ecological problems today are problems deeply and fundamentally linked to energy sources, and not taking this into account means failing to recognise one of the specificities of our historical time. To further approach this problem we can look at the critique of technology developed by Alf Hornborg (2001) in a series of contributions to the theorising and understanding of our contemporary social-ecological crisis. In this context, Hornborg has argued that “[…] industrial technology presupposes asymmetric exchange and accumulation…” and that “Conventional discourse fails to recognize precisely why industrial technology remains the privilege of a global minority” (2001, p. 18). This argument is based on an assessment of how, in fact, what many see as the disharmony between economics and ecology obscures the fact that “[...]industrial technology is a product of this disharmony”. Thus, Hornborg continues arguing that “[i]t is the productive potential of the fuels and other raw materials which is at work in our machines, not the machines “in themselves”” (2001, p. 12). In elaborating on this point, Hornborg arrives at a view on growth that deeply and critically links growth and technology: ““Growth” is not something that technology generates in a purely material sense, but a consequence of how industrial products are evaluated in relation to fuels and raw materials. Growth and technology are thus not primarily material parameters but sociocultural constructions” (2001, p. 13). Hornborg’s effort to defamiliarise common understandings of technology aims at unravelling the illusions created by both technology and machinery and in doing so he both criticises and elaborates on Marx’s notion of fetishism and applies this to machine technology (2001, p. 131). In this regard, a main argument elaborated by Hornborg goes as follows: “The most opaque, semiotic elements in technological systems, however, are the various symbolic strategies that are employed to generate and maintain the social structures of exchange (of labor, materials, fuels, etc.) that are requisite for the very existence of those technologies. The modern phenomenon that I refer to as machine fetishism tends to represent such structures of exchange as external to the technologies “themselves.” I argue that this is an illusion. “Prices”, “wages”, “interest”:

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Hornborg’s assessment of machine fetishism offers a radical critique of both discourses on development and mainstream ideas of technological solutions to environmental problems. In his words, “The technological benefits of industrial society cannot be generalized for the total population because the very constitution of these technologies, […] relies on unequal exchange between different sectors of that population. Modern technology is precisely a strategy of elite capacitation, no less inherently skewed in distribution than the ability to command armies of corvée laborers. It is a subset of a wider category of social strategies for capacitation of certain sectors of the population through systematic appropriation of resources from other sectors” (2001, p. 153). However, this critique has not led Hornborg to a totalising and absolute critique of technology and modern technics. In this regard, Hornborg has highlighted that depending on the assessment of what is bio-physically possible and in egalitarian terms, some technologies and technics, such as for example some IT and medical techniques, should be preserved and re-signified (2012).

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When recognising this crucial dimension concerning the ambivalence of technology, it emerges clearly that nowadays, what fundamentally defines normative meanings of technology is the correlation between technology and bio-physical and ecosystem processes. When taking this into account, the ambivalence of the technology argument elaborated by Feenberg can also be connected to the work of Adorno and other Frankfurt school scholars. Though there is a widely accepted idea that one of the fundamental characteristics of Frankfurt school critical theory is the critique of technology, a closer examination of this topic shows that Adorno, and also at some points Horkheimer, theorised technology as a very social process with differentiated outcomes. According to this, both negative and positive effects of technology should be analysed in relation to the role of technology in a concrete and specific economic context. In Dialectics of Enlightenment, Adorno and Horkheimer argued the adverse effects of technology “[…] should not be attributed to the internal laws of technology itself but to its function within the economy today” (p. 95). A similar position was held by Adorno much later, and in 1965 he argued: “What has really changed quite centrally is that technology has developed to the point where it would be possible to satisfy human needs so that there is no longer any need for privation” (2006 [1965], p. 182). Above we can see how Frankfurt school authors developed a critique of capitalist technology, or the incorporation of technologies within capitalism, but they also outlined possible different uses of technology, which is linked to what Feenberg understands as the ambivalence of technology. Thus, when in several other moments Adorno highlights the possibility of redirecting technological development towards providing human conditions and better use of those technologies, the ambivalence of technology thesis appears very much as giving technology a qualified meaning and using technologies in other

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societal frameworks or in creating technologies that can be defined in other terms and in comparison to how technologies are defined within capitalism. However, this is a method of approaching technology that is narrowly linked to a radial critique of the links between subjectivity and technology under capitalism. A main point in this regard is what Adorno refers to as the “veil of technology”, which for him means that “People are inclined to take technology to be the thing itself, as an end in itself, a force of its own, and they forget that it is an extension of human dexterity. The means—and technology is the epitome of the means of self-preservation of the human species—are fetishized, because the ends—a life of human dignity—are concealed and removed from the consciousness of people” (Adorno, 2012, p. 200). In this regard, we can note that the critique of technology that Adorno elaborates here aims at showing the relations between subjectivity and capitalist technology, and in this regard Adorno argues that the current position of technology in the world produces “technological people” who are “attuned to technology”.

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Here, and crucial to a discussion on degrowth and energy democracy, it is important to consider that struggles to define what democracy is in relation to technology and vice versa are struggles about creating a meaning and materiality in specific historical contexts. Here we should consider that Marx and Adorno had views on democracy that were connected to the totality of relations where democracy is an important political process, but in their views on democracy this is always qualified in relation to what democracy is under capitalism and what democracy can be beyond the limits of capital. Thus, we believe that we can improve the approach to the relations between energy democracy and degrowth by looking at possible re-appropriations of technology, or the development of new technologies. This allows advancing more specific definitions of degrowth and energy democracy as processes embedded in social-ecological relations. This approach can also allow distinguishing between on the one hand normativity within the capitalist system and a normativity beyond capitalism, as highlighted elsewhere (Alarcón, 2016) and on the other hand, it allows distinguishing a dialectical approach to technology and approaches that reinforce technological optimism and techno-fixes under the limits of capitalism (Clark and York, 2012). The analysis, conceptual reconstruction and critiques we have developed here can give us important theoretical tools with which to explore concrete initiatives that can today be linked to degrowth and energy democracy. Thus, from the previous presentation, we can shortly summarize our theoretical discussion and elaborate the following theoretical insights on technology that we will bring into the analysis of our empirical case: 1) technology is basically a matter of social production leading to struggles about technology in itself and technology for certain purposes. 2) As technology mediates between human beings, their organisations, non-human nature and other ecological relations, the approach we are taking for our analysis here is an approach that explicitly allows technology to be seen as a process taking place within wider social-ecological relations and bio-physical realities. In turn, this allows us to look at the process of energy extraction and energy use as

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3. The case study and its methodological orientations

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processes making and constituting new problems regarding social relations and the ambivalence of technology in capitalism. Within this context, a crucial role is played by discourses in the context of struggles concerning the use of ecosystems. Here, we argue, a focus on technological fetishism allows understanding how concepts and ideas on technology are articulated and also how critiques of current uses of and views on technology are produced. In what follows we will present the main methodological orientations concerning our empirical work.

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Our approach to the case study of energy in Växjö is based on personal, semistructured and open-ended interviews and on the analysis of different texts we identified and selected for their relevance to the case study. This material has served us to answer the question guiding this paper in relation to the theoretical and conceptual points underpinning our analysis. Methodologically, we have drawn elements from Critical Discourse Analysis for our empirical analysis. The main methodological orientations in our study are presented below.

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During 2015, we conducted 8 interviews including municipality representatives, the municipality‘s energy company and representatives from environmental organisations in the area. The semi-structured and open-ended interviews were held in person. By following the methodological orientations for semi-structured and open-ended interviews, we allowed, as Bernard suggests, the interviewees to expand and elaborate the topics that became more relevant, either for the interviewee or the researcher (Bernard, 2006, pp. 210, 212). The interviews were transcribed and we analysed them in order to identify possible environmental discourses produced or reproduced by the actors we interviewed. In addition, we looked at relevant documents where views on energy in Växjö have been produced and reproduced. For the purposes of identifying discourses in this case, we worked with Hajer’s definition of environmental discourses, according to which a discourse is “[…] a specific ensemble of ideas, concepts, and categorisations that are produced, reproduced and transformed in a particular set of practices and through which meaning is given to physical and social realities” (Hajer, 1995, p. 44). Furthermore, our empirical reconstruction of the case is based on an analysis of discourse that draws insights from critical discourse analysis (henceforth CDA (Fairclough, 1995, 2001). The methodological insights from CDA we have used in this study are the following: 1) We have used texts and interviews identified and selected as relevant for the case study to first identify and second analyse the production of discourses around energy in Växjö and, 2) we have located the production of discourses around energy in Växjö within the wider material context of struggles to produce meaning on the use of resources for energy extraction in Växjö. In this sense, Harvey’s approach to the dialectics of discourse helped us to place language and discourse in relation to other moments of the social process. In terms of Harvey, those moments are: (a) power (discourses are manifestations of power), (b) thought, fantasy and desire (the imaginary), (c)

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institution building, (d) material practices, and (e) social relations. In addition, for Harvey discursive construction operates in relation to “non-discursive realities” to which certain terms supposedly allude (for example, environment, nature, time-space) (Harvey, 1996). From Harvey’s proposal of approaching discourses as implying a dialectical process, we bring into our analysis a specific concern with the material practices in the social-ecological process in which discourses on energy and technology in Växjö both take place in the context of local ecosystems and how such a discourse-material practice nexus become a constitutive moment in how energy use is socially disputed in the area. Therefore, our focus on discourses and ecosystems here implies the identification and analysis of discursive relations and practices and their relations to other discourses, a non-discursive reality, the question of technological fetishism and the material practices entangled with the production of discourses. This allows us to articulate our theoretical points with the methodology we have used to produce and analyse our empirical material. Here, such methodological choices are seen in a narrow connection to the theoretical discussion we have developed previously.

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4. Energy in Växjö, Sweden as a case study

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The city of Växjö in Sweden is a medium-sized city of c. 85,000 inhabitants and is known for its environmental work (Slavin, 2013). The municipality-owned energy company has a combined heat and power plant (CHP) using biomass from forestry waste obtained from the forestry industry of the Kronoberg Region to which the city geographically belongs. Below, we reconstruct and approach the case of Växjö by referring to our interviews and the discourses we have identified and analysed.2 4.1. Växjö as “the greenest city in Europe”: a discourse on the environment, technology, and growth

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In 1996, local politicians decided that Växjö would stop using fossil fuels. Currently, the city aims at becoming “Fossil fuel free Växjö” by 2030. An important step in supporting the slogan of the city, “The greenest city in Europe”, as well as the goal of a “Fossil fuel free Växjö” is to have the technological infrastructure in place to obtain energy by using biomass. Växjö municipality owns its energy company and its combined heat and power plant “Sandvik”, which supplies Växjö with local district heating, cooling and also generates electricity. The energy plant is owned by the company “VEAB” (Växjö Energi Aktiebolag), which is a municipally-owned company (VEAB, 2015). In 1970, the city started building the district heating net and in 1974 the CHP plant “Sandvik I” started running on oil. In 1980, after the oil crisis of the 1970s and other environmental issues concerning air quality, the local government decided to start shifting away from oil. The local forestry

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industry can provide VEAB with wood chips and sawdust, which the forestry industry considers as waste. Waste biomass turned out to be the best alternative to guarantee a secure supply, with a more stable price that was cheaper than oil. The municipality became one of the first companies in the world to start running an energy plant on woodchip combustion on a large scale, and VEAB was the first company in the country to convert an oil-fired district heating plant to burn biofuel. In 1983, Sandvik I ran 80% on biofuel and 20% on oil (City of Växjö, 2015). The forestry sector is a main productive activity in the region, and at the same time, key for the energy use in Växjö as it provides biomass waste for the energy company (City of Växjö, 2015). As Di Lucia and Ericsson (2014) state, during the 1990s, several district heating companies started to import wood fuels from the Baltic countries and Canada. However, Växjö has counted on the local resources, which was a very important fact influencing the shift to biomass. Currently, all wood by-products come from no further than 100km from the city, with an average of 70 km (Interview, Joachim Eriksson, Project Leader in Växjö’s energy company VEAB). The resource availability means that Växjö stands out from other Swedish cities with the same energy system, making it interesting from an energy autonomy and democracy perspective.

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Climate change mitigation had already been incorporated among the environmental concerns within Växjö’s Municipality in 1996 when a local political decision mandated that Växjö would become a fossil fuel free city (Gustavsson & Elander, 2012). Then, also in 1996, the CHP plant “Sandvik II” was built and it ran over 95% on biomass. An energy accumulator was installed in 2004 and this allowed reduction of oil use and the beginning of the implementation of district cooling with absorption technology incorporated in its expansion in 2006. In 2015, a new CHP boiler was launched in the plant known as “Sandvik III”. It runs on biomass and peat, generating 100 MW of heat and power. The Sandvik plant consists of different units of boilers that can be run on several types of fuel. Therefore, the company can obtain the required energy in what is understood as an economic and environmentally friendly way (VEAB, 2015). Thus far, the municipality has reported a 47% reduction in carbon emissions per capita between 1993 and 2013 (City of Växjö, 2015). As explained by a project leader in the VEAB energy company, the Swedish government gave Sandvik II a “green certificate” (electricity certificate) for the generation of renewable electricity, which lasted fifteen years and came to an end in 2015 (Interview, Joachim Eriksson). This was one of the reasons why the new plant, Sandvik III, was built in 2015. This recently launched new plant, or boiler, was also granted a green certificate for 15 additional years, which would repay two thirds of the investment. To understand this, one needs to consider that in 2003 Sweden introduced the “Electricity Certificate System” which intends to increase renewable electricity generation. It is a market-based instrument of financial support which replaced the previous system of public grants and subsidies for renewable electricity inputs to the electricity grid (SEA, 2015). Renewable sources considered as valid for this certification are wind, solar, wave, geothermal, certain hydro, certain biofuels and peat in CHP plants (IEA, 2014).

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Currently, the plant provides energy to the city as electrical power, cooling and 95% of the total heating (Interview, Joachim Eriksson). In terms of electrical power, VEAB generates electricity when it is profitable. Certain conditions must be met such as high demand and convenient selling price in order to run the turbine that generates power which today has a generation capacity of 38 MW. Furthermore, if one considers the total electricity introduced into the local grid, Växjö would consume what it needs and the rest would be delivered to the national grid (Interview, Stefan Olsson, Energy Agency for Southeast Sweden). In contrast to electricity, heat and cooling stay local for reasons of physical infrastructure.

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The VEAB company sells heating and cooling services to Växjö consumers directly (Interview, Joachim Eriksson). Conversely, electricity generated in the plant is sold to Bixia, an electricity trading company with a retailer role which provides electricity to the consumers in the city. In turn, Bixia is owned by several municipalities in the south of Sweden, including the municipality of Växjö. VEAB owns Bixia in a small amount of shares according to the Mayor of Växjö (Interview, Bo Frank, Mayor of Växjö). The electricity generated enters a transboundary market place known as “Nord Pool Spot” where prices are constantly changing depending on the inputs from different companies within the trading area. The price is lower when the “big bowl” is well fed with electricity (Interview, Stefan Olsson).

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The property and ownership of the company are important here as VEAB, the CHP plant and heating infrastructure are owned by the municipality, which holds 100% of the shares (Interview, Joachim Eriksson; Interview, Bo Frank). With regard to electricity, VEAB also owns the local grids of distribution. In other municipalities, local grids can be owned by either the municipality or larger energy companies (Interview, Stefan Olsson). The national grid is owned by the state through the company Svenska Kraftnät (Note: The English translation is Swedish National Grid. Svenska Kraftnät, as its webpage states, is also the authority responsible for ensuring that Sweden's electricity supply is safe, environmentally sound and cost-effective. See: http://www.svk.se/en/). The regulation of the heating energy price comes from the local government which decides on the price policies (Interview, Bo Frank). In this case, it was decided to set the price equally for everyone, leaving aside the possibility of social tariffs. One argument used for this is that giving free energy to poor people would encourage greater consumption and less efficiency and thus it is argued that it is better to help poor people through better salaries and better infrastructure (Interview, Bo Frank). The fact that the municipality has local resources at its disposal is understood as reduced dependence on resources from other areas. Ownership of the energy company has allowed the municipality to keep energy prices low and so benefit consumers, meaning that Växjö ranks 20 out of 125 municipalities in Sweden in terms of low energy prices (Interview, Bo Frank). According to Växjö’s mayor, citizens in the city essentially express their

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power over decision-making by voting for representatives and thus the power of the citizens relies on their electoral character. However, this does not mean that other instances through which people can influence decisions and politics are precluded (Interview, Bo Frank). Consumers are indirectly represented on the board of the energy plant as they can vote for the city board, which has a total of 61 seats. The results of the elections determine how many seats each political party has on the city board. The energy company has its own board, where only political parties are represented. If a specific political party wins more seats in the city board, then this party has a greater opportunity to gain more seats on the energy company board (Interview, Henrik Johansson, Environmental Coordinator of the municipality of Växjö). The city council also decides, by voting, on the politicians that can be on the different boards (Interview, Åsa Karlsson, Deputy Mayor). In addition, two members of the energy plant trade union participate. They express a professional opinion only, and do not take part in voting on decisions. Voting for political representatives is how democracy and representation by political parties is carried out in Växjö. Yet, the civil society representatives interviewed mentioned that participation in energy matters is an issue with which regular citizens are unfamiliar. They know how democracy works by voting, and that politicians take decisions for the rest of the people (Interview, Jesaia Lowejko, Transition Towns in Växjö; Interview, Love Eriksen, Head of a forest programme from Naturskyddsföreningen - the Swedish Society of Nature Conservation). When asked how to improve democracy, participants in general said that this was very difficult, as democracy is already implemented to a high extent (Interview, Åsa Karlsson).

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From what we have reconstructed above, we can observe that an environmental discourse has been produced as a way to give meaning to both Växjö´s municipality-owned energy company and the political and material context in which this develops. In analysing such discourse we can see how concepts such as democracy, participation and citizens´ well-being become entangled with ideas on energy, technology and natural resources available for an alternative form of energy extraction and use. Here there is a discursive relation between material practices around the CHP plant and views on how this was possible because of environmental concerns that were well channelised through a political discourse producing meaning about the existence of a democratic and sustainable local energy system. However, inside this discourse a clear limit to the meaning of democracy operates as there is the sense that democracy is already implemented to a high extent. In other words, this discourse moves through the conceptual limits of a representative and electoral democracy which also permeates how Växjö´s municipalityowned energy company is managed. As we will see below, another discourse interacts in this case, which questions the energy approach adopted by the municipality of Växjö, and does so by articulating different ideas, concepts and categories concerning forestry and forest use in the area. Moreover, this discourse is essentially a discourse that opposes the way in which the forest sector develops and grows in the area.

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VEAB´s activities means payments for the by-products from the forestry sector that are the source of energy for its plant. Over time, the price has increased considerably (Interview, Love Eriksen; Interview, Henrik Johansson). This happens because more energy companies demand such by-products, which favours the forestry industry. Electricity is a byproduct of the CHP plant from which the municipality can gain profit by selling to the grid (Interview, Joachim Eriksson). Here, the green certificates allowed this electricity to be profitable, which would not have been possible had the plant been based on fossil fuels (Interview, Henrik Johansson). In terms of the generation of employment, the rate is currently higher compared to the period when the energy plant was run on oil (Interview, Joachim Eriksson). Now the employment linked to the plant is local and mostly focused on forestry activities. Thus the CHP plant gives benefits to forest owners; benefits that did not exist during the times when the plant was run on oil (Interview, Henrik Johansson). Currently, forest owners can sell the forestry residues and get money for them. Hence, a new possibility for jobs was created after the implementation of the biomass-based CHP plant. Here the political decision of shifting to biomass embraced the idea of enhancing the wood industry while creating local jobs, and by doing this the local government would obtain increased tax revenue (Interview, Åsa Karlsson). Within this context, it is argued that Växjö is already quite self-sufficient in energy terms and a key factor for this is the property of the company and the availability of local biomass (Interview, Åsa Karlsson). The shift to renewable energy contributed to a higher degree of self-sufficiency as the oil supply had become unreliable and expensive, and this contributed to local energy autonomy (Interview, Henrik Johansson). Yet, this autonomy is limited because the necessary fuel for transportation to access the biomass is not produced in the area. Thus the use of local resources is still dependent on external inputs (Interview, Julia Ahlrot, Environmental Strategy Planner of Växjö Municipality).

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The relations between the CHP plant and the use of forest resources reveal fundamental social-ecological dimensions concerning the case of energy use in Växjö. The plant obtain energy from biomass, which currently includes the parts of the tree that are of no use for the timber and paper industry. This includes the branches and roots. Leaves are left on the ground. At least 25% of a tree is considered to be waste, or better said, a byproduct of the forestry industry (Interview, Love Eriksen). In order to close the biological and chemical cycle, ashes are returned to the land in a form of nutrient recovery and it is argued that 50% of the ashes are returned to the plantations, which has a positive effect in combatting acidification (Interview, Joachim Eriksson). The other 50% is used as construction material (VEAB, 2015). However, although there is a law stating that large forest owners must return the ashes to their plantations, local environmental NGOs argue that ashes are not being returned at the extent of 50% to the plantations, perhaps because they are taken

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to other farmland instead, and many forest owners are not following the law because of the costs related to moving the ashes and other technical difficulties (Interview, Love Eriksen). In this view, the situation is also one where forest owners can decide whether they remove all the branches and all the roots as by-products, whether they will leave branches on the soil to buffer the impact of heavy machinery and also, how they will limit the environmental impacts (Interview, Love Eriksen). In this view, the removal of the branches and other biomass that is not being used in the timber industry from the soil has a significant impact on the ecosystem and biodiversity, for example for insect species that need the biomass (Interview, Love Eriksen). In this sense, theoretically, the higher the demand for by-products, the more damage is caused to biodiversity in the area. Also, clear cuts and new plantations are being implemented around and within small conserved areas of forest with high biodiversity values. This affects the areas in such a way that they cannot continue functioning in the long run as key biotopes, home to key habitat species. Thus, some actors argue that though it is a positive thing that energy use depends on local resources, on the other hand the forestry industry is seen as severely affecting biodiversity in the forests. Within this context, it is argued that: “So, from a sustainable view, I’m not sure that VEAB will be sustainable because it is dependent on the forest industry…they (VEAB) use waste from the forest industry, which is great but it is not sustainable because then we are dependent on the forest industry and the forest industry, it is not sustainable” (Interview, Jesaia Lowejko).

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An important social-ecological question emerges here since on one side there is a fast-growing forestry industry, and on the other there is a slow-growing conservation scheme. In terms of discourses, two main meanings regarding this situation can be observed. From the municipal perspective, this would not be a problem in the Kronoberg Region. The belief of having hugely extensive forest seems to allow the forestry industry to keep growing at a fast rate with no problems or barriers in this region. In addition, from the municipality’s perspective, the forest industry management is sustainable, and it is assumed that cut trees are replaced by the plantation of new trees. However, this view is contested through discourse as other actors who are against using the forests even more argued that the economy must rely on something other than growth (Interview, Jesaia Lowejko). From the perspective of a municipality’s representative, the South of Sweden has sufficient forest in the form of forest plantations, unlike the North of Sweden (Interview, Bo Frank). In this view, the ecological problem is identified as the loss of open landscape in exchange for new forest plantations and thus the forestry industry is affecting biodiversity by transforming the landscape and environment (Interview, Bo Frank). In this regard, it is argued that forest certifications, such as those developed by the FSC and PEFC, do not ensure sustainable forestry activity (Interview, Love Eriksen, who supports this assessment in a report by the Swedish Society of Nature Conservation from 2013). Within this context, it is argued that the demand for by-products and timber is constantly increasing, and an increasing demand

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Contrasting with the voices of environmental activists who problematise the relation between forestry and the approach to energy in Växjö, the biomass CHP plant is seen by other actors as helping the city in becoming “Fossil Fuel Free Växjö” by 2030, and this plant marked the beginning of the climate work in the city, which is the basis for the city being considered “the greenest city in Europe” (Interview, Julia Ahlrot). According to the City of Växjö (2015), Växjö is the first local authority in the world to have gone so far regarding climate mitigation. By shifting to energy from biomass in the 1980s, emissions were most likely reduced, which was better from a climate point of view. In theory, the burning of biomass by-products is seen as meaning net zero carbon emissions (Interview, Henrik Johansson). Here, the shifting to biomass as a fuel is a climate change mitigation measure which is conceived to be sustainable as long as the trees cut are replaced by new ones and are grown in an appropriate way (Interview, Stefan Olsson).

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The CHP plant under study here shows important dimensions of a technological system for energy use which is also local and part of a decentralised system aiming at mitigating the effect of climate change. District heating and the locally produced electricity is more energy efficient than it would be had electricity and the energy for heating come from the centralised system. Within this context, issues of energy security are also argued in favour of the municipality’s energy project and it is stated that in the case of a total blackout in the south of Sweden, Växjö has the capacity to generate and deliver electricity to the city according to a list of prioritised buildings such as the city hospital (Interview, Joachim Eriksson). A study of energy balance concludes that 50% of all energy used in the municipality annually is generated in the plant. The other 50% is sourced from elsewhere (City of Växjö, 2015). In terms of future perspectives, some actors argue that energy demand will stay at the same level in the future regardless of newcomers to the city, given that the development of technology is continuing and that efficiency measures are being implemented in new housing, for example (Interview, Joachim Eriksson). For others, the city should probably consider having more variation when it comes to electricity generation (Interview, Henrik Johansson). Still for other actors, the amount of renewable and sustainable electricity in the city could be increased by producing 100% of renewable electricity at the local level, leaving aside all electricity that comes from the centralised grid and which originates from nuclear, coal and other fuels (Interview, Åsa Karlsson). The dynamics of Växjö’s energy approach presented above cannot be understood without considering a number of discursive relations expressed by actors as key aspects of this local approach to energy. In this regard, local possibilities to manage resources and to build the necessary infrastructure according to local needs, including the local energy system, were identified as a key factor (Interview, Åsa Karlsson). In addition, a

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considerable percentage of the tax money goes to the local level authorities, who can take decisions on crucial matters concerning the city. Here, ideas of municipality-ownership and re-municipalisation of energy infrastructure are seen as ways for municipalities to regain control of energy services (Interview, Julia Ahlrot). This contrasts with the situation where energy companies are owned by multinational corporations far from the citizens. Conversely, it is argued, at the municipal level, a similar interest can be shared, which contributes to making a better and more sustainable city (Interview, Julia Ahlrot). Here the implementation of the district heating plant based on biomass is regarded as highly important to the environmental governance of the city (Interview, Henrik Johansson). Furthermore, as one actor remarked, strong and independent municipalities in Sweden give people more chances to decide on their own future and find solutions, compared to places where the administrative system is centralised and obstructed (Interview, Stefan Olsson).

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From our discourse analytical perspective, we can note that in the context of important environmental problems and challenges, the municipality’s main actors have produced a discourse about the energy company owned by the municipality and have signified this process in terms of a more democratic path in the use of energy. This discourse is very specific and very contingent, as it is a discourse that links different individuals and groups around a city which is discursively presented as the greenest city in Europe and a city that provides electricity by publicly appropriating energy sources from the local area. In this context, the discourse articulated by the VEAB company and the municipality, which is well articulated in their webpages, shows how along an environmental focus there is considerable effort to attract new investments to the area, expand business possibilities, offer adequate infrastructure to companies and maintain a growing forestry industry. However, the discourse produced around the municipality-owned energy company in Växjö is contested. One main point of contestation is the use of and reliance on forest resources and the problematic context for this in the area. In particular, it is important to note that the resistance to this discourse takes place along recent assessments of the national environmental objective known as sustainable forests (in Swedish this environmental objective is called levande skogar, which is sometimes translated as ‘sustainable forests’ and sometimes as ‘living forests’). Here we can highlight that the local assessment of the environmental objective known as sustainable forests for the Kronoberg Region indicates that those objectives will not be attained within the time frame allocated (See: Environmental Objectives Portal: http://www.miljomal.se/Miljomalen/Regionala/Regionalt/?eqo=2&l=7&t=Lan). This shows how the understanding of what can be understood as non-discursive elements of the social, namely ecosystems and biodiversity in the area, becomes a main area of struggle through the production of discourses on energy, technology and the use of forest biomass. In addition, this situation reveals important contradictions implied in the growing use of forestry resources and technological development for energy use in light of the prospect of energy democracy and degrowth. What is important to note here is that issues such as climate change and sustainability challenges are shared environmental concerns among the

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Part 5. Discussion and conclusions

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We start our discussion by recalling the study of Kunze and Becker (2014) in which twelve cases showing potential paths for energy democracy in practice were approached and gave the authors empirical insights to conclude that none of the case studies were able to satisfy all criteria conceptualising energy democracy. In relation to the findings of Kunze and Becker, the case study of energy use in Växjö, which is heavily dependent on biomass, revealed to us important barriers for a potential energy democracy path emerging from this localised and alternative energy system. In addition, we have found little potential for degrowth in the case. Our analysis of the case shows that interplaying in the lack of potential for energy democracy and degrowth, the question of technological fetishism and wider social-ecological relations under capitalism vis-à-vis energy democracy and degrowth are crucial to consider. By bringing back our theoretical problematisation of technology, we can state that our case study shows two important things concerning our effort of interrogating degrowth and energy democracy in relation to critical theory of technology. First, technology oriented to energy use in Växjö has created discursive struggles about technology in itself and technology for the purposes of forestry and energy use. Second, the use of technology for energy use in Växjö can be seen here as a process taking place within contested social-ecological relations that are represented through discourses. There is no doubt that the municipality’s energy company certainly implies important degrees of formal democratic participation in it, decentralisation of energy extraction and important political decisions operating at the local level. Yet, the overall question of how this project could fit within a framework of energy democracy and degrowth raises critical issues. One of such issue concerns the discursive relations produced around energy in Växjö. As seen above, patterns of formal and representative democratisation of energy are strong at the local level where decision making on energy politics takes place, and in this sense we can see aspects of energy democracy in the case study. In fact, local representative democracy enables a municipally-owned energy company to meet the energy requirements of its citizens. At the conceptual level, the link we can discuss here is one between possibilities of a degrowing economy in the area and the possibilities of energy democracy that could arise from that experience of a localised energy system rooted in formal and representative democratic processes and a capitalist economy. In one of the meanings of energy democracy, namely the possibility of municipalities making energy democracy possible (as put forward by Kunze and Becker, 2014; Sweeney, 2015 and Thie, 2013, referred to above), we can sustain that we have possibilities of a localised energy system moving in the direction of

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energy democracy in Växjö. Yet, in terms of possibilities for degrowth it is clear that a degrowth idea in its different dimensions can hardly be found in this case. The possibilities for degrowth are not realised partly because the interactions between the potential for energy democracy and an alternative use of technology operate here within the framework of a wider capitalist economy oriented both materially and discursively to growth, and where a growing forestry industry serves both to provide energy and to support and expand economic activities in the area. In fact, this alternative energy project can easily reinforce the logic of capital accumulation through a technological development aimed at keeping economic growth in the local area but resting on a conflictive development of forestry vis-àvis biodiversity and environmental objectives for the local forests. Though one could still recognise the potential for energy democracy and degrowth in this case, such recognition should also make sense of the internal limits for degrowth and energy democracy of this case. In analysing the contestation concerning this energy project and focusing on the relation between energy democracy, degrowth and a critical theory of technology, two important and fundamental problems we identify here are: First, it is because forests cannot be separated from a historical trajectory of conflicts within the Swedish forest sector that the use of forests for this company and the technologies making it possible become a contested issue. Secondly, the particular ways of assessing the consequences of forest use for energy purposes bring new technologies and assessments that are linked to different environmental objectives. That relation creates a discursive tension between a technology that is used for environmental purposes but at the same time is still based on forest biomass, which in Sweden is a contested raw material (Alarcón, 2015; 2012). Another important dimension of this is that the discursivity produced around the company is a discursivity that reinforces possibilities to link capitalist technologies to forms of localised and formally democratic energy systems. In producing such discursivity, the assumption is that the municipality creates processes of democratic participation that are incorporated in the understanding of this energy company and its different projects, including their current technological development. However, in none of the cases here is there a critical approach to the question of economic growth which is a taken-for-granted aspect of this effort to obtain energy for local development. By bringing back our conceptual discussion on energy democracy, degrowth and technology developed above, we can see here three important processes that make the link between potentials for energy democracy, degrowth and alternative technological paths an open social-ecological problem in the case of Växjö. First, the case is embedded in wider social-ecological relations. Thus, a discursive struggle around the ambivalence of technology is in this case rooted in the very condition of possibility for a growing use of forests as raw materials for energy extraction. In this regard, we are clearly observing how an alternative assessment about continued reliance on biomass for energy states that this is not a real technological alternative, as it is essentially a technological system that improves on the use of forests, a resource that continues to be contested in the area. In relation to our discussion on technological fetishism, this case shows that technological development at one end of

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energy use cannot be separated from the conflictive material condition of possibility of such technological development. Secondly, this case shows how any deeper account of technology vis-à-vis democratic processes in the use of resources implies a question for the wider bio-physical dynamics that make possible local meanings of technology. In analysing such a material and communicative process, we have discovered that behind slogans and local incorporations of global sustainability challenges, the discursive struggle around how and why to use energy remains a central political and conflictive issue in Växjö. In this regard, our research adds important elements to previous critical political aspects identified concerning the case of Växjö (See Khan, 2013)

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This, we argue, can be better understood as a problem that permeates any attempt to improve both democratic and technological practices under capitalism. In this regard, new contexts created by the production of knowledge about expanding socialecological problems force us to redefine what technology should mean in this context. For the purpose of energy democracy and degrowth, this is a fundamental theoretical and empirical question. As the case of Växjö shows, and echoing other approaches to degrowth and energy democracy, both the prospects of degrowth and energy democracy require that our very understanding of technological processes are oriented to fully and radically approach such processes in both their material and communicative dimensions within current capitalism. Our third and final point here is that, as the case of Växjö shows, any attempt to think of social-ecological alternatives oriented towards degrowth and energy democracy should focus on the conflictive nature of technology in both its material and communicative moments.

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The theoretical and empirical analysis of Växjö’s municipally-owned energy company offered in this paper, and the discursive and material relations it produces, allow us to draw some concluding remarks here. Firstly, this case offers an empirically rich case where potentials for energy democracy and degrowth can be studied by taking into consideration the social-ecological relations where the case is situated. Here, we have seen how such prospects for energy democracy and degrowth are limited as this energy project continues being based on the use of a contested resource in Sweden and also because this project assumes the development of economic processes oriented towards economic growth. Secondly, we have not found that a proper process of degrowth, implying a shift from capitalism towards alternative wider social-ecological relations, is in place. Within this context, a main conclusion concerning technology is that a situation of technological ambivalence and technological fetishism in this case implies a discursive struggle in order to define whether or not a project of energy use based on forestry biomass can be compatible with other environmental and social goals. This represents, we believe, a fundamental open question regarding the social process of producing a local meaning around energy democracy and degrowth in Växjö and beyond.

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT Acknowledgements

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The authors wish to thank Christian Kerschner, Melf-Hinrich Ehlers and Mikuláš Černík for great and very helpful editorial support and to the three anonymous reviewers for very helpful comments, insights and advise that greatly improved the paper.

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3. Stefan Olsson, Project Leader in the Energy Agency for Southeast Sweden 4. Joachim Eriksson, Project Leader in Växjö’s energy company VEAB 5. Bo Frank, Mayor of Växjö

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6. Åsa Karlsson, Deputy Mayor of Växjö

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