In parallel with recent community-led action, published research within energy democracy [1,2] and energy justice [3,4] has proliferated over the past decade. Though nascent, advancements are being made rapidly in both sets of literature, which include critical reviews offering extensive discussions on these emergent bodies of literature [5–7]. In this chapter, we respond to some of the noted shortcomings in the literature by (a) linking energy democracy to a wider theory of democracy, and (b) providing empirical evidence to ground energy democracy-related analyses. We use contrasting case studies from Canada and the United States to contribute to the conceptual debate on different understandings of energy democracy and how these manifest in diverse democratic contexts. Moreover, we showcase the importance of thinking pragmatically about the challenges of employing the concept of energy democracy in relation to regional (or non-local) energy policy. Our aim with these case studies is to demonstrate how emergent social movements' actions to resist, reclaim, and restructure facets of a wider energy system [2]can politicize the deployment of energy infrastructure. Unlike the majority of the literature, our case studies also draw attention to other dimensions of democracy beyond direct citizen involvement to demonstrate democracy in practice across multiple governance scales and in different energy infrastructure and national contexts. In some instances, these processes involve the use of established democratic institutions (e.g., provincial elections in Ontario, Canada) to further group interests across multiple governance scales. Further, our case studies illustrate how different types of infrastructure [onshore wind energy and unconventional oil and gas (UOG)] can shape democratic politics and how these facets may interact in different ways over space and time.