The German energy transition has unsettled sedimented power structures in the energy sector, traditionally being almost exclusively dominated by huge, semi-private companies. Whereas fossil energy has been processed in huge, centrally administered plants, renewables promise to decentralize power generation, thereby enabling the emergence of a more heterogeneous energy sector. Yet, instead of being a linear process away from those former structures of domination, fossil energy industries try to uphold their position, for instance, by planning to expand national oil and gas extraction with help of hydraulic fracturing (in short, fracking). The paradox between energy transition and expanded oil and gas extraction, however, seems to open new forms of politicisation of fossil energy. In previous decades, apart from environmental organizations, the Northern German public was not paying much attention to the oil and gas production in their neighbourhood. Yet, the reassembling of the production with fracking opened up ‘new points of vulnerability, where experts and professional politicians might become liable, once again, to the claims of those through whose lives new arrangements must be built’ (Mitchell 2011, 241). In other words, the energy transition did not only enable former ‘users’ of energy to become ‘producers.’ The transition is also accompanied by new frictions and conflicts that enable the wider politicisation of the field. In this paper, I explore how these diverse Northern German forces shape and *are shaped* by the controversy on fracking.
