This article critically interrogates the over-emphasis upon urban solutions when considering complex and multi-scalar energy infrastructures that must transition to low-carbon intensity for a sustainable future. While urban actors can play an important role in energy transition, their interventions are riven with difficulties, and at times failure, as they encounter challenges of politics, capacity and agency in a broader and multi-scalar governance landscape. Drawing upon the comparative and variegated political economies of energy infrastructure governance in Germany and the UK, this article makes three critical arguments. Firstly, it contends that patterns of ownership of key infrastructures, particularly in the highly privatised context of the UK but also in Germany’s more diversified energy market, trouble urban-level interventions. Secondly, against a backdrop of post-financial crash austerity, we raise the issue of capacity at an urban level, principally concerning the financing and technical administration of urban infrastructural ‘solutions’. Thirdly, the entrenched politics of neoliberalisation, its multi-scalar articulations and in particular discourses of marketisation and competition, while distinct across the two contexts, shape the possibilities, imaginaries and support available for local-level change in complex infrastructures. The article points to differential urban capacities and governance conditions that require a greater degree of nuance in sustainability narratives, and a critical conversation around the need for multi-scalar coordination in energy transitions, in order to avert catastrophic climate breakdown.

中文翻译：

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多尺度能源转型对城市的限制：英国和德国的机构、基础设施和所有权

本文批判性地质疑了在考虑复杂且多尺度的能源基础设施时对城市解决方案的过度强调，这些基础设施必须向低碳强度过渡以实现可持续的未来。虽然城市参与者可以在能源转型中发挥重要作用，但他们的干预措施充满了困难，有时甚至失败，因为他们在更广泛和多尺度的治理环境中遇到了政治、能力和机构的挑战。本文借鉴德国和英国能源基础设施治理的比较和多样化政治经济学，提出了三个关键论点。首先，它认为关键基础设施的所有权模式，特别是在英国高度私有化的背景下，以及在德国更加多元化的能源市场中，给城市层面的干预带来了麻烦。其次，在金融危机后紧缩的背景下，我们提出了城市层面的能力问题，主要涉及城市基础设施“解决方案”的融资和技术管理。第三，根深蒂固的新自由主义政治及其多尺度表达，特别是市场化和竞争的话语，虽然在两种背景下截然不同，但塑造了复杂基础设施中地方层面变革的可能性、想象和支持。文章指出，不同的城市能力和治理条件需要在可持续发展叙述中更加细致入微，并围绕能源转型中多尺度协调的必要性进行批判性对话，以避免灾难性的气候崩溃。