Appropriating the Urban Metabolism – an Analysis of the Democratic Potential of the Energy Transition from an Urban Political Ecology Perspective.

• Applicant: Dr. Sören Weißermel
• Subject Area: Human Geography
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 567661446

The urban energy transition is a key factor in meeting multilateral emission targets and urban climate neutrality strategies. At the same time, it is highly contested due to questions of cost distribution, political and private sector interests. Locating the energy transition at the intersection of the climate, housing and democracy crises, the research project explores the question of how the urban energy transition can be democratized and to what extent social appropriation processes can counteract the forms of alienation inherent in the crisis and represent a path towards a socio-ecological transformation. The research project approaches this question from an urban political ecology perspective on the urban energy metabolism as a historically evolved human-nature relationship, where democratization must begin. The urban energy metabolism is enabled and organized by material structures and technologies of energy production, distribution and use, the legal framework, specific property relations and policies as well as the mediating human labor. It is permeated by power and interests and is fundamental to socio-ecological inequalities. Urban political ecology has the potential to capture this complexity and gain concrete insights into how effective urban climate policy can intervene in the energy metabolism and enable its democratization. However, it has so far played a subordinate role in the social science and human geography debates on urban climate policy and the energy transition. The research project aims to contribute to closing this existing gap. On the one hand, the scientific discussion is to be enriched by the perspective of urban political ecology on the democratization of metabolisms. To this end, the role of human labor and knowledge in metabolic relations and for such social appropriation, which has not been sufficiently taken into account, will be focused on and conceptualized. On the other hand, empirically based and transferable insights into the possibilities of an effective democratization of the energy transition are to be gained and made relevant for urban politics. Based on document analyses and qualitative empirical studies in Hamburg and Berlin, the historically evolved energy metabolisms as well as political negotiation processes around their design are analyzed and discussed. The empirical focus is on the respective remunicipalization of energy networks as well as cooperative local heating networks and the question of their design and democratic character and degree of intervention in the energy metabolism. In accordance with the specific research interests, a special focus is placed on the social appropriation of labor and decision-making processes as well as on the appropriation and dissemination of technologies and knowledge.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants