The Norwegian Energy Commons: Re-Thinking Dynamics Between the State, the Market and Civil Society

The idea of the commons has increasingly entered the field of renewable energy research. Often articulated as a bottom-up practice based on collective self-governance, the commons are positioned as a third mode of social organization, beyond the state and the market. At the same time, tensions exist within the scholarly literature whether the concept should be seen in strict opposition to, or in relation with the state and market. This paper argues that these tensions and the conceptual diversities generally seen in the commons literature necessitate context-specific translations of the commons-concept to make the concept meaningful across different policy fields and cultural and institutional settings. By revisiting the history of Norway’s energy governance regime, particularly in the context of hydropower and wind power, the paper shows how the idea of the commons has been present as a moral notion of energy resources as shared. This notion has been operationalized in Norwegian energy management as a form of commons within the state. In doing so, the paper contributes to the broader debate on understanding possible interlinkages between commons, state, and market, and address an undertheorized dimension in current energy scholarship – i.e., the overlap between the three dimensions. Rather than viewing energy commons as strictly opposed to state or market-based systems, the paper argues for a conceptualization that acknowledge and engage with their interdynamic relationship.