Energy made in Northern Friesland: fair enough?

International audienceCitizen wind parks in the German district of Northern Friesland are a well-known example of the citizen-funded development of wind power. This paper follows the careful (and successful) collective structuring of wind power in Northern Friesland, along with the State of Schleswig-Holstein’s attempt, which was challenged and ultimately overturned, to replicate and generalise participation as a basis for scaling up wind power in the region through planning. In so doing, the paper explores the processes of fair public participation and the modalities through which a shared sense of fairness is constructed. Following John Dewey’s theory of valuation (1939), fairness is considered here as a value that emerges from collective practices. Furthermore, by approaching fairness as a dimension of the wind energy assemblage, we capture the finer details of how it is constructed and embedded in everyday life. We argue that this enmeshment of practices and values challenges our definition of energy justice because it requires the making of norms to be connected with shared values. Finally, the recognition of differences among territories plays an important role as wind power scales up