Energy infrastructures reconfigured: Exchange, Energy, Data - Societal transformation processes of local networks of actors towards novel renewable energy infrastructures and decentralised markets: Session: Governing and anticipating the energy Transition

The energy sector is in a state of transformation towards more decentralised, renewable and digitalised energy infrastructures and -markets. New potential forms of community organisation emerge, through which the ways energy is produced and shared among citizens within communities become mediated. However, the promised potential for sustainability and decentralisation with multidirectional relationships between stakeholders must be critically assessed. Additionally, the term community proves to be ambiguous and often a priori normatively connotated, thus increased reflection upon the types of neighbourhoods and networks of actors understood by the term (energy) community is needed. Based on a set of empirical cases of local energy communities (Netherlands, Spain, Australia), this paper provides a theoretical approach for understanding societal transformation processes through a tetrad of foci of relations. Four central foci of relations within societal transformations emerge and become dominant throughout the network of actors: Material relations; Promising relations; Powering relations; Datafying relations. The term Material relations describes forms of interaction between actors and physical infrastructures, namely technological artefacts, buildings, objects present in their daily practices and environment. Promising relations, refers to forms of anticipation, such as hype-building and expectations voiced by individual or groups of actors. The term Powering relations, encompasses forms of power, uphold, represented or e+G17xerted upon others by actors. Datafying relations refer to how networks of actors become digitally mediated and more data-driven, platform-based energy management systems. These clusters are multifaceted, constantly mutually coconstituting, and central for transformative potential, and the advancement of transformative processes within local networks of actors.