Regional Mountain Conference

In the European Alps, water governance is increasingly shaped by the intersection of climate policy, ecological regulation, and community-driven energy transitions. While the Energy Transition and the increasing demand for renewable energy is often framed as a technical challenge, Alpine regions reveal it to be equally a social and political process, particularly where hydropower modernization intersects with river ecology, local livelihoods, and collective governance traditions. This contribution examines how Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) mediate water-energy relations in Alpine contexts, focusing on the rehabilitation and modernization of existing small-scale hydropower plants.

Drawing on a political ecology perspective, this contribution conceptualizes hydropower rehabilitation not merely as infrastructure upgrading, but as a site of social-ecological negotiation where power relations, ecological responsibilities and local imaginaries of sustainability are actively contested. RECs, enabled by the EU’s Clean Energy Package and national legislation, are analysed as governance arenas that link historical practices of communal water management with contemporary demands for ecological responsibility and the European Green Deal. While small hydropower offers continuity, flexibility, and cultural embeddedness, its future viability increasingly depends on socially legitimate governance arrangements that balance ecological restoration with energy autonomy.

Empirically, the contribution draws on the early stages of a comparative research project on Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) in Tyrol and Salzburg. At this stage, this contribution is based primarily on a systematic review of policy documents and REC-related regulations, complemented by exploratory insights from selected RECs that integrate small-scale hydropower plants. Rather than presenting consolidated empirical results, this contribution offers preliminary and exploratory observations on how existing governance arrangements, regulatory requirements, and institutional contexts shape the possibilities for hydropower rehabilitation within RECs. By situating these initial findings within a political ecological perspective, the contribution aims to open a discussion on emerging governance challenges and research gaps in Alpine water-energy relations, and to outline key analytical questions for future empirical work.