The political ecology of energy transitions

As a response to the deepening climate crisis, ambitious political and economic programmes for transitioning away from fossil fuels are being proposed, largely aimed at expanding private investments in renewable energy generation and electric automobility.

However, plans to decarbonize energy and transport systems will require substantial amounts of land of and raw materials, whose extraction and processing are themselves carbon intensive, environmentally destructive and socially damaging.

In this presentation, based on a collaborative research paper (forthcoming in Political Geography), Diego Andreucci and Gustavo García López elaborate on the notion of ‘decarbonization by dispossession’ in order to shed light on the contradictory political ecology of energy transitions.

1. First, they suggest understanding mainstream decarbonization plans as a ‘fix’ to intersecting crises of accumulation and hegemony aimed at saving capital rather than the planet.
2. Second, reflecting on the mineral intensity of renewable energy technologies, they propose approaching ongoing transitions as a form of extractivism, embedded in global geographies of unequal ecological and value exchange.
3. Third, through a case study of nickel mining, their research shows that the expansion of industrial-scale renewables is likely to reinforce the colonial character of energy provision, creating sacrifice zones of extraction and processing concentrated in global peripheries.

They conclude that the political ecological critique of these processes helps us to understand the profoundly contradictory character of capitalist responses to the climate crisis, and the political opportunities that may emerge as a result.