Tensions Between Local Embeddedness and Scaling up: Insights from Grassroots Sustainability Initiatives in the Renewable Energy Transition
研究法国南部公民可再生能源合作社联盟在区域规模扩张中面临的自然、文化和政治张力，揭示工业化与资金驱动如何威胁地方嵌入性，对理解基层可持续倡议的规模化挑战有参考价值。
Although grassroots initiatives in the renewable energy transition are flourishing, their embeddedness in local contexts challenges their capacity to spread their impact on a broader scale. Certainly, while scaling up has been described as difficult to combine with local embeddedness, little is known on the specific nature of the tensions involved in combining the two. Studying a federation of citizen renewable energy (RE) cooperatives in the south of France, we show that the engagement in a scaling-up process at a regional level generates three main kinds of tensions associated with specific dimensions of local embeddedness: natural, cultural, and political. We emphasize how these dimensions are likely to be threatened when the federation engages the cooperatives in a rapid scaling-up dynamic in which the drive to industrialize projects and find funding is dominant. We acknowledge the effects of these tensions on grassroots sustainability initiatives and collective organizing processes.