To mitigate human-induced climate change, the EU commissioned to decentralise energy system to districts and neighbourhoods that autonomously produce more renewable energy than they consume, namely Positive Energy District (PED). Despite its human-centric principals to design and implement inclusive and just PED, who is included or excluded in the PED-making process and what implications it has for energy justice are represented inconsistently between institutional sphere (policy, mediating actors) and consensual sphere (the public, citizen groups). This paper, therefore, presents a case study of how local citizen groups in Torres Vedras, a PED-in-the-making town in Portugal, reproduce, negotiate and contest the hegemonic, neoliberal governmentality of PED in institutional discourse. Through focus group discussions (n=3) with diverse demographics in the region, participants collectively brought up their experiences and reflections on the existing and potential impacts of PED’s interventions. As energy injustices and social inequalities are shared problems locally and globally, it helps citizens to make sense of energy justices for PED from their situated knowledge. The focus groups show citizens’ critical thinking capacity to decolonize energy justice by nuancing Global North’s concern for preserving an unsustainable, electricity-dependent modern way of life borne out of the capitalist, fossil-fuel based and undemocratic energy system. Reformulating the normative topics of energy justice in western scholarship such as energy poverty and green gentrification, participants prefigure an energy citizenship in solidarity with Global South and marginalised groups by local alternative practices based on indigenous, ecofeminist lens, ethics of care and place-based approach.

--

Positive Energy District,energy citizenship,energy justice,social representation,decolonisation,prefigurative politics