More than filler: Middle actors and socio-technical change in the energy system from the “middle-out”

This paper concentrates on ‘middles’ and ‘middle actors’ in energy systems and introduces a “middle-out” framework for examining and supporting systemic change to a lower carbon society. We propose this “middle-out” approach as a complement to “top-down” and “bottom-up” strategies. Our approach suggests that two essential elements for successful systemic change are actors’ agency and capacity, where ‘agency’ refers to actors’ abilities to make their own free choices, and ‘capacity’ refers to actors’ abilities to perform the choices they made. We argue that due to their position between top and bottom actors and between technology and implementation, middle actors play crucial functions in the transition process. Their abilities are based to their own agency and capacity which they can exercise to influence the agency and/or capacity of other actors. The paper discusses middle actors vis-à-vis ‘intermediaries’ and demonstrates the value of the middle-out approach. Through elaborated examples of three middle actors – congregations, building professionals, and commercial building communities – it shows how middles exert influence upstream (to top actors), downstream (to bottom actors) and sideways (to other middle actors) through mediating, enabling and aggregating both themselves and others. A few weaknesses of this approach are discussed as well.