This paper analyses the enabling conditions, barriers and future prospects of
decentralised experimentation with renewable energy sources (RES) in the
German energy transition, with a specific focus on the multi-level governance
framework. It investigates why, and under which conditions, decentralised
experiments have served as a major driving force in the development of RES in
Germany, highlighting the instrumental role local governments and the national
support scheme for RES have played in supporting and protecting decentralised
RES initiatives. Looking at the impact of decentralised experimentation, this
paper argues that the scope of decentralised renewable energy development is
now such that there is an obvious need for multi-level governance coordination
to address the emerging challenges of temporal and spatial disparities between
power generation and demand, as well as distributional and land-use conflicts.
The authors observe that many local and regional governments have not yet
sufficiently considered the coordination required to make their own efforts
compatible with overall energy system transition needs. They may lose their
function as important facilitators for RES experimentation if they do not
start engaging in new approaches to stakeholder participation, coordinated
regional energy flows and system integration of RES. Moreover, bottom-up
experimentation with decentralised energy system structures is also threatened
by recent changes in the political framework condi-tions at the European and
national level which have led to a reform of the German support scheme for
RES, including, amongst others, a phase-out of the feed-in tariff scheme and
its replacement by an auction scheme. Against the backdrop of these adverse
political framework conditions, the paper concludes by discussing strategies
to preserve the dynamics of decentralised experimentation as a vigorous driver
of the German energy transition
