Local electricity exchange is often praised for its ability to empower consumers and benefit communities. In this paper, we investigate and compare the development of local electricity exchange practices in three European countries: France, Switzerland, and Great Britain. We ask: how do local electricity exchange practices and markets vary across national contexts? What are their dynamics of ownership and consolidation, if any? What areas of contestation or disagreement emerge? To answer these questions, we first briefly define and conceptualize local electricity exchange and its categories before explicating our mixed methods research design consisting of document analysis, 40 original expert interviews across the three countries, and observational data derived from seven meetings and events. These comparative cases reveal the complexity and variation of the local electricity exchange phenomenon across our three national contexts, how such acts of decentralization in turn (and perhaps unpredictably) consolidate power among incumbent actors, and how local electricity exchanges are prone to significant contestation and disagreement. Moreover, they reveal competing dynamics of centralization and shifting forms of ownership. We conclude by noting that (i) local electricity exchange has as much potential to cement conventional actors and power relations in the sector as it does to support new actors or transform power relations; (ii) approaches to local electricity exchange vary considerably across national contexts and are strongly linked with institutional frameworks and policy regimes; and (iii) the future merits of local electricity exchange are prone to great uncertainty and contestation.

This article focuses on the drivers and barriers afforded by three innovations—automated vehicles, electric mobility, and ridesharing and bike-sharing—in the four African urban areas of Johannesburg (South Africa), Kigali (Rwanda), Lagos (Nigeria) and Nairobi (Kenya). We ask: what are the drivers behind these innovations in these regions? What are the potential barriers? And what implications for policy or sustainability transitions emerge? Based on a review of the academic literature, we argue that these innovations are particularly important at providing low-carbon transitions for the transport sector, even though low-carbon development is an important topic that is under-researched in many developing economies. We begin by introducing these three innovations and justifying our four case studies. We base the research design on an interdisciplinary critical and umbrella literature review. We then discuss the results of our review, which is organized as a dualism of positive drivers and negative barriers, before discussing how to better harness innovation for low-carbon mobility in an African context. We find that the possible benefits of our three innovations exist only juxtaposed against negative barriers; no innovation is purely positive or negative and all of them have multiple dimensions of positivity and negativity. Although we have treated each of the three innovations as fairly isolated from one another, there are emergent (and potentially strong) couplings or entanglements between them, e.g. between electrification and two-wheelers or automation and ridesharing. In some contexts, hybridization, incrementalism and leapfrogging are seen as positive attributes and desirable characteristics of planning and technology adoption.