tion of renewable energy hardware supported by
subsidies and protected market share for specified
forms and sizes of ‘near market’ technologies (Mitchell
et al. 2006). A stream of spatially dispersed private
sector projects, primarily on-shore wind farms and
energy from waste installations, extended the type
and size of hardware beyond large-scale HEP
(Walker 1997). The range of organisations, partners
and intermediaries involved also diversified, with
functional distinctions appearing between generation
and supply and between those developing, owning
and managing particular facilities. However, the
social organisation has been largely standardised on
a model of private capital funding with returns to
shareholders, feeding electricity into the grid and
working through a liberalised but regulated energy
market. Under this mode ‘green’ electricity becomes
a distinct commodity, with tariffs available for
customers to purchase a proportion or all of their
electricity from renewable sources (Hartmann and
Ibanez 2007).