Renewable energy and social justice advocates are organizing around the potential for community-based democratic organizations to promote more decentralized, sustainable, and just societies. Within this movement, consumer-owned electric utilities are often seen as central actors. Yet, there has been little systematic investigation into why integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) varies across these utilities. We explore this question using literature on sustainability transitions and strategic action fields. Choices about when and how to integrate DERs are shaped by new interpretations of long-standing principles, existing institutional relationships, and a utility’s political power. We identify how four divergent strategies shape distinct technology configurations with differences in physical scale, concentration of political authority, and distribution of economic benefits. These differences suggest that local technology ownership may not be sufficient to motivate change in some contexts. Policy addressing political processes and ownership scale may be needed to accelerate more sustainable and just energy transitions.

可再生能源和社会正义倡导者正在围绕社区民主组织的潜力组织起来，以促进更分散，可持续和公正的社会。在这一运动中，消费者拥有的电力公司通常被视为主要角色。但是，对于为什么在这些公用事业中分布式能源资源（DER）的集成会发生变化，几乎没有系统的调查。我们使用有关可持续发展过渡和战略行动领域的文献来探讨这个问题。关于何时以及如何整合DER的选择取决于对长期原则，现有机构关系和公用事业的政治权力的新解释。我们确定了四种不同的策略是如何通过物理规模，政治权威集中度，和经济利益分配。这些差异表明，在某些情况下，本地技术所有权可能不足以激发变化。可能需要针对政治进程和所有权规模的政策，以加速实现更可持续，更公正的能源转型。