A wind of change in Germany: From local opposition against wind energy towards the national social movement Vernunftkraft

Abstract: To reach the targets of the Paris Agreement and reduce its CO2 emissions, the expansion of wind energy on land as part of the so-called ‘Energiewende’ (energy transition) is of major significance for Germany. Yet, these sustainability endeavors are under serious attack due to a multitude of protesters that oppose wind energy efforts and unite under the label ‘Vernunftkraft’ to resist the energy transition. Poking on the need to address the normative load of sustainability transitions to improve contemporary and future sustainability efforts, I approach this social movement Vernunftkraft in a scale-sensitive manner. Thereby, I form a socio-political lens that draws on Tilly’s synthesis of social movement theory and Gramsci to make sense of the underlying grievances and counter-hegemonic ideology of this conservative social agent. In this regard, I deduct the necessary data through a critical discourse analysis of Vernunftkraft’s texts and the websites of local initiatives in a mixed-method approach and complements those findings with additional literature reviews. The findings show that multi-facetted grievances related to all three pillars of energy justice (redistribution, representation and recognition) and different attributes towards climate change, Energiewende and the locations of wind farms matter on the local level. Combined with a political opening through an elitist ally and societal cleavages, those grievances give rise to the development of Vernunftkraft with all its resources and multi-level organization who’s national framing problematizes state interventions and renewable energy altogether. Accordingly, albeit having a neoliberal counter-hegemonic ideology on the national level, this thesis reveals that the wind energy opposition movement is heterogeneous and subsumes divergent grievances and beliefs across scales. Those multi-dimensional grievances are neglected by the contemporary design of the Energiewende and its emphasis on distributional justice. Hence, to reduce additional backlashes against transition efforts, the fields of transition studies and sustainability studies need to be more attentive to inherent, multi-dimensional injustices of transitions. A promising approach is thereby eyeing the grievances and ideologies that social movements display to balance social and environmental sustainability efforts.