Exogenous shocks, social skill, and power: Urban energy transitions as social fields

The constantly growing scholarship on urban energy transitions needs a framework to analyze these transitions. This article proposes the Field Perspective (FP) as an approach for the study of urban energy transitions. FP analyses how the interplay of actors, who are dedicated to a similar purpose, and the structures guiding this interplay, co-evolve. By applying FP to the energy transition in the German city Emden, the article shows how the transition evolves through (a) alterations in the exogenous context of the city (e.g. national feed-in-tariffs for renewables), (b) the social skill and changing interplay of local actors engaged in the transition, and (c) the emergence of power-constellations and rules.