French policy localism: Surfing on ‘Positive Energie Territories’ (Tepos)

• The paper bears witness to the emergence of a French energy policy localism.
• It presents a sample of significant local rural experiences in the climate energy domain in rural France.
• These experiences are risky, trial-and-error transcalar processes.
• They amount to a different way of doing energy policy.
• French localism surfs on these innovative territories while remaining ambiguous about the status that it confers on them.

This paper is interested in sustainable energy initiatives in French rural areas. It follows up the UK debate about ‘localism’. UK policy localism has been cast as neoliberal, framing communities as competent and competitive actors, morally responsible and accountable for their destiny.In France, the emerging policy localism is surfing on an ongoing political structuration of innovative rural territories – ‘Positive Energie Territories’ (TEPOS). The paper presents and discusses the results of a rough census (undertaken in 2012) of significant experiences in this domain. It points to a few experiences and depicts them as risky, trial-and-error transcalar processes that endow locally emergent energy issues with a political dimension. To this extent, they amount to a different way of doing energy policy.The analysis points to an ambiguity in French policy localism. This localism may pave the way for an upscaling of the ongoing TEPOS political structuration, or tend to make TEPOS into demonstration territories within a neoliberal RTD policy approach. In the latter case, it may not necessarily fit territories to pursue their political structuration with a view to the energy transition.