The good economy and the politics of addition - Citizen financing of renewable energy projects

Résumé En

Crowdfunding platforms for renewable energy (RE) projects and citizen investment are two forms of citizen financing of renewable energy projects (CIFRE) which have emerged in France. Crowdfunding platforms mainly offer loans or bond products (crowdlending), granted by individuals or legal entities to renewable energy projects. Citizen investment allows citizens or local territorial entities to take shares and possibly develop local RE projects. Both claim the ambition to involve citizens in the financing of the energy transition, carry visions of this involvement and of the politics that should underlay the energy transition. Each in their way, they are part of a good-economy for renewable energies (RE), in that they aim at bringing together the production of profits with that of social, environmental, territorial or political value(s). Both pretend to do so by adding participation to the already existing RE good economy. This article explores the ways in which this addition is made and discusses the more general pretention of the good economy to ‘add up’ to the economy, and its relation to the possibility of a critique of the good economy.