Energy democracy in a continuum: Remaking public engagement on energy transitions in Thailand

Sustainable energy transitions are fundamental in making climate actions effective and in attaining sustainable development. To achieve the transition inclusively, fairly, and justly, democratizing these processes seems imperative; yet, not all human societies are thriving in democratic spaces. Focusing in the non-democratic state of Thailand, this paper explores the materiality of energy democracy in such locations. Using mixed qualitative methods and a grounded approach, the paper offers a case study of community-oriented renewable energy transitions as practices occurring outside the realms of state-sanctioned and government-fostered apparatuses for public engagement. The case shows how these practices continually shape and co-produce energy sociotechnical orders. The paper further shows how a space for communal deliberation can become a site for the making and remaking of public engagement, and how, over time-of hits-and-misses, of consensus-and-dissensus, of stability-and-uncertainty-it could became durable, yet remained open-ended and provisional.