Community renewable energy (CRE) represents a growing empirical and academic turn towards community-based sustainability and climate change interventions. This paper brings together postcolonial theory and CRE for the first time to outline fundamental tensions in the conceptualisation and application of the idea of community. The understanding of community within the CRE discourse is largely: (1) location-based; and/or (2) a community of choice that is consciously opted into. Driven by postcolonial theory, this paper counterpoises both as a form of community as contract against an idea of community as solidarity. Its central thesis is that actually existing community, contrary to how the bulk of CRE literature commonly understands it, is a combination of bonds of solidarity and emergent purposes. The paper conceptualises community as fluid bonds of solidarity that align and realign differently around different purposes. R esum e: L' energie renouvelable communautaire (CRE) repr esente de plus en plus un virage empirique et acad emique en direction d'interventions communautaires de d eveloppement durable et de lutte contre le changement climatique. Cet article fait dialoguer pour la premi ere fois la th eorie postcoloniale et l'approche CRE afin de souligner les tensions fondamentales dans la conceptualisation et l'application de l'id ee de communaut e. La compr ehension de la communaut e dans le discours de la CRE est largement bas ee sur: (1) le local, le lieu, ou la localisation; et / ou (2) une communaut e de choix qui est d elib er ement choisie. Inspir e par la th eorie postcoloniale, cet article s'oppose a ces deux acceptations de la communaut e comme contrat pour proposer l'id ee de communaut e comme solidarit e. La th ese centrale de l'article est que contrairement au sens donn e la plupart du temps par la litt erature traitant de la CRE, la communaut e r eellement existante est une combinaison de liens de solidarit e et de finalit es emergentes. L'article conceptualise la communaut e comme des liens fluides de solidarit e qui s'alignent et se r ealignent diff eremment autour de diff erents objectifs.
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