Mobilising for local energy democracy in the United States: confronting political lock-in and private capture in the campaign for public power

Abstract This article theorises remunicipalisation as a political and spatial project of resistance to neoliberal governance and corporate capture. Drawing on insights from energy democracy literatures, we conceptualise remunicipalisation not as a managerial fix but as a transformative strategy to reclaim local control over essential infrastructure. Through comparative analysis of grassroots public power campaigns in Maine and Rochester, NY, we foreground the role of localised regimes of obstruction, comprising entrenched corporate-state alliances and risk-averse political cultures in shaping spatial inequality and thwarting democratic ownership of energy infrastructures. In doing so, the paper contributes to theorising local public ownership as a terrain of contestation and possibility in the energy transition.