Local climate action from the middle-out: the social potential of craft guilds to facilitate low-carbon installations in Germany

Abstract

Shortages of skilled workers and special expertise in the crafts and trades hamper the implementation of low-carbon transitions in many countries. However, research on effective governance arrangements targeting this ‘installation bottleneck’ is limited. To fill this gap, we adopt a Middle-Out Perspective (MOP) and use rich qualitative data including in-depth interviews to study the role of craft guilds within Germany's low-carbon transition, particularly in rooftop photovoltaic and heat pump installation. Our analysis demonstrates that guilds occupy pivotal ‘upper middle actor’ positions to resolve the ‘installation bottleneck’ from the middle-out. Situated between policymaking and on-the-ground installation, guilds have unique agency and capacity qualities deriving from preferential access to the local implementers of low-carbon transitions and legal commissions with critical tasks including training, informing, and associating installers. However, we find that guilds suffer from resource constraints, membership declines, and a lack of deliberate activation. Informal power structures and deficits of change makers exacerbate guilds’ propensity for inertia while unstable framework conditions and the dearth of strategic engagements leave guilds inactivated. Our extended MOP framework of agency, capacity, and propensity allows researchers and policymakers to attend to potentials and trade-offs between these qualities. By recognising the contextual social sphere of installation as potential, policymakers can design more effective implementation strategies that gain people’s support by ‘meeting them where they are’.