This paper contributes to recent debates in energy geography, especially to energy transition research and literature, by developing a critical and empirically grounded understanding of energy transitions as expressions of contentious socio-spatial politics, past and present. The paper argues that historical struggles and contentious political practices around energy, so called energy struggles, continue to inform the ongoing and dynamic socio-spatial politics of energy transitions today and often manifest themselves in transition narratives. This analysis is supported by qualitative empirical materials derived from recent fieldwork in Berlin, Germany, which was conducted within the broader left-green movement for a socioecological and democratic German Energiewende. A historicisation of contentious politics and energy struggles facilitates an empirically robust framing of energy transition projects as dynamic, multi-actor, and more than eco-technical processes. The paper's contribution to energy geographies is threefold; firstly, utilising an empirically robust and historically sensitive analysis of the German Energiewende, the paper explores the deep entanglements of history, space and struggle in energy transitions. Secondly, the paper emphasises the need to understand energy transitions as constituted by energy struggles and contentious politics, past and present. Thirdly, the paper examines emergent spaces of energy democracy as part of the Energiewende and explores recent energy democracy demands as a spatial politics of energy transitions.

Picking up on the manifestation of state intervention following the 2008 financial crisis, we argue that the recent trend towards remunicipalisation underlines but also problematises the thesis of new state capitalism. Remunicipalisation refers to a process whereby towns, cities and sub-national regions take previously privatised services and infrastructures back into public ownership. Remunicipalisation has led to the emergence of regionally- and municipally-owned state enterprises across a wide range of sectors including water, energy, waste, transport, education, (tele)communications, and health and social care. Engaging with the nature of the ‘new’ state capitalism, and particularly challenging its theoretically restrictive understanding of the state as ‘market enabler’, we highlight that remunicipalisations have often emerged in response to the failed promise of neoliberal capitalism to improve the quality and efficiency of public services through the (supposed) competitiveness of the free market. Like neoliberalism, remunicipalisations take spatially diverse and variegated forms as market-driven logics interact with other political and economic determinations. As such, remunicipalisations often encompass critiques of neoliberal governance and market volatility, and instead focus on the potential of regional wealth creation as well as stabilising local market dynamics through diversifying ownership forms. Drawing upon our ongoing empirical work on German remunicipalisation, we aim to foreground how multiple determinations at work in the German political economy at different spatial scales shape its particular trajectory out of neoliberal mutation. We show how the remunicipalisation of energy provider TEAG has enabled the local state to intervene and diversify the uneven economic geographies in the state of Thuringia.

This article engages constructively with the 'new municipalism', while cautioning against imposing another set of top-down elite imperatives on 'left behind places'. It also points out that local does not necessarily mean progressive, citing the example of Tees Valley's Conservative mayor Ben Houchen. As an alternative, it draws upon positive experiences from the recent global remunicipalisation trend, and highlights the importance of working with 'actually existing' municipalisms on the ground, focusing in particular on Germany, where there remains a strong public ethos, and commitment to öffentliche Daseinsvorsorge - 'public (well-)being provision'. It takes Darmstadt as a specific example, and looks at its city economic strategy - Stadtwirtschaftsstrategie. It concludes that productive coalitions and new alliances for a renewed left municipalism can be built through working with continuing, new and diverse forms of municipal values and cultures, both within the UK and internationally.

There is a growing interest in the progressive potential of remunicipalisation, a global trend for towns, cities, and even subnational regions to take formerly privatised assets and services back into public ownership. In this paper, we offer a novel conceptualisation of remunicipalisation, developing a spatialised conjunctural perspective through critical engagement with the work of Stuart Hall, Antonio Gramsci, and recent geographical scholarship on political economy transitions. This draws attention to the open, dynamic, political, and spatially diverse aspects of remunicipalisation as part of a mutating process of neoliberalism. Emphasising the conjunctural insight of neoliberalism's shifting and variegated terrain on which progressive forces have to mobilise, our theorisation has implications for left political strategy and broader transformative projects against a backdrop of global economic, social, and ecological crisis. Resumen: Existe un creciente inter es en el potencial progresista de las remunicipalizaciones, una tendencia a nivel global por la cual ciudades, e incluso regiones subnacionales, recuperan la propiedad p ublica de recursos y servicios previamente privatizados. En este art ıculo presentamos una conceptualizaci on novedosa sobre el fen omeno de las remunicipalizaciones. Desarrollamos una perspectiva atenta al an alisis de las coyunturas y los espacios, a partir de un di alogo cr ıtico con los trabajos de Stuart Hall, Antonio Gramsci, y con estudios provenientes de la geograf ıa sobre las transiciones en la econom ıa pol ıtica. Esto implica prestar atenci on al car acter abierto y din amico y a la diversidad pol ıtica y espacial de las remunicipalizaciones como parte de los procesos de mutaci on del neoliberalismo. Colocamos enfasis en comprender el aspecto coyuntural del terreno cambiante y variado en el que se mueve el neoliberalismo, en donde las fuerzas progresistas deben movilizarse. En tal sentido, nuestra teorizaci on tiene implicancias para pensar estrategias pol ıticas de izquierda y proyectos de transformaci on m as amplios contra el trasfondo de la crisis econ omica, social, y ecol ogica a nivel global.