| 1. |
- Bridge, Gavin, et al.
(författare)
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Energy infrastructure and the fate of the nation: Introduction to special issue
- 2018
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Ingår i: Energy Research & Social Science. - : Elsevier. - 2214-6296 .- 2214-6326. ; 41, s. 1-11
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this article we introduce a Special Issue of Energy Research and Social Science focused on energy infrastructure and the political economy of national development. Many countries are experiencing transformational growth in energy infrastructure, such as transmission and distribution systems; import, export and storage facilities; the development of domestic energy resources; and construction of new power generating stations based on wind, water, coal, gas and nuclear sources. Large-scale projects like these are frequently justified by appeals to grand narratives – promoting economic growth, securing energy supply, modernizing energy service provision, and transitioning to more environmentally sustainable energy systems - in which the fate of the nation is closely tied to infrastructural development. The papers in this collection present compelling empirical evidence of how claims for energy infrastructure’s national significance and/or necessity intersect with the (re)production of political and economic power. Drawing on case material from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia and Europe, they highlight the capacity of different energy technologies and infrastructural assemblages to shape political and economic outcomes beyond their role in storing, transporting or transforming energy. This Introduction to the Special Issue does three things. First, it characterises the scale and significance of the contemporary ‘infrastructural moment’, observing how, in many national contexts, energy policy-making remains centralised and divorced from public participation. Second, it critically differentiates existing literature on the political economy of energy infrastructure to identify five distinctive ways in which research understands the ‘political work’ infrastructure performs. Third, it introduces the papers in the Special Issue and organises them into four key themes. Overall, the Introduction affirms the importance for social science of understanding the economically and politically constitutive power of energy infrastructures. The critical reflexivity this requires is essential to moving towards energy infrastructures that are just, equitable and sustainable.
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| 2. |
- Bridge, Gavin, et al.
(författare)
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Pluralizing and Problematizing Carbon Finance.
- 2019
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Ingår i: Progress in Human Geography. - : SAGE Publications. - 0309-1325 .- 1477-0288.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Growing emphasis on finance as key to decarbonization requires social science research that critically attends to the emergent and diverse forms taken by carbon finance. First, we pluralize research into carbon finance, building on existing work to identify four main forms: carbon markets; ecosystem services; natural capital investment; and, capital allocated to low-carbon enterprises and projects. Second, we propose that research should problematize the processes through which carbon is variously translated into financial value. Illustrated with reference to low-carbon investment in electricity generation, our agenda thereby extends from the difficulties of producing carbon-as-commodity to the uncertainties of constituting carbon-as-asset
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| 3. |
- Bridge, Gavin, et al.
(författare)
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Towards a Political Ecology of EU Energy Policy
- 2018
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Ingår i: Advancing Energy Policy. - Cham : Palgrave Pivot. ; , s. 163-175
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- At the root of energy policy are fundamental questions about the sort of social and environmental futures in which people want to live and how decisions over different energy pathways and energy futures are made. The interdisciplinary field of political ecology has the capacity to address such questions, while also challenging how energy policy conventionally gets done. We outline a political ecology perspective on EU energy policy that illuminates how the distribution of social power affects access to energy services, participation in energy decision-making and the allocation of energy’s environmental and social costs.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Kuchler, Magdalena, 1979-, et al.
(författare)
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Down the black hole : Sustaining national socio-technical imaginaries of coal in Poland
- 2018
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Ingår i: Energy Research & Social Science. - : Elsevier BV. - 2214-6296 .- 2214-6326. ; 41:S1, s. 136-147
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper explores the socio-technical imaginaries surrounding infrastructures of coal mining and coal combustion in Poland. Contemporary policy makers in Poland mobilise a national imaginary inherited from communist times – encapsulated in the slogan ‘Poland stands on coal’ – that fuses infrastructures of coal extraction and combustion with the fate of the nation. This socio-technical imaginary provides support for coal futures, even in the face of contradictory evidence for domestic resource depletion, poor regional air quality, and global climate change. To examine this process, the paper brings research on socio-technical imaginaries into conversation with work on resource materialities. It highlights how certain materialities of coal (abundance, accessibility, energy density, location) were integral to the emergence of a national socio-technical imaginary of modernisation via coal; and how other materialities (declining resource quality, effects of emissions on respiratory health, coal as CO2-in-waiting) now collide with the political strategies of a government determined to reassert ‘black gold’ as a bedrock of national development for years to come. The paper considers how contemporary political efforts to rehabilitate coal and secure its future in Poland draw selectively upon a socio-technical imaginary of coal-fuelled national modernisation.
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| 6. |
- Kuchler, Magdalena, 1979-, et al.
(författare)
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Speculating on shale : Resource-making and the 'politics of possibility' in Poland and the UK
- 2023
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Ingår i: Political Geography. - : Elsevier. - 0962-6298 .- 1873-5096. ; 107
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper focuses on the speculative character of knowledge and action in relation to subterranean resources, drawing on the curtailed histories of shale gas development in Poland and the UK. It adopts a political-economic orientation towards speculation rather than a narrowly financial one, seeking to understand the 'politics of possibility' associated with speculative resources. Specifically, we build on work in political geography to understand speculation as a form of productive 'resonance' replicating across epistemic, economic, and political domains. Thinking of speculation as resonance - as synchronous vibration across different areas of social life, stimulated by and intensifying uncertainty - offers a novel way of thinking about the possibilities of subterranean resources for forging political alignments. We show how speculation was integral to demonstrating the resource potential of shale in both Poland and the UK, and consider how this speculative character of shale subsequently infiltrated into economic and policy realms. Resonating across these domains, and amplifying epistemic uncertainties about shale, speculation produced a politics of possibility orientated towards 'gambling' on potential outcomes. By taking seriously the political possibilities of the uncertainties attached to subterranean resources, we extend the value of speculation as a concept for analysing the constitutive role of uncertainty in politicaleconomic governance.
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| 7. |
- Kuzemko, Caroline, et al.
(författare)
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Covid-19 and the politics of sustainable energy transitions
- 2020
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Ingår i: Energy Research and Social Science. - : Elsevier BV. - 2214-6296. ; 68
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this perspectives piece, an interdisciplinary team of social science researchers considers the implications of Covid-19 for the politics of sustainable energy transitions. The emergency measures adopted by states, firms, and individuals in response to this global health crisis have driven a series of political, economic and social changes with potential to influence sustainable energy transitions. We identify some of the initial impacts of the ‘great lockdown’ on sustainable and fossil sources of energy, and consider how economic stimulus packages and social practices in the wake of the pandemic are likely to shape energy demand, the carbon-intensity of the energy system, and the speed of transitions. Adopting a broad multi-scalar and multi-actor approach to the analysis of energy system change, we highlight continuities and discontinuities with pre-pandemic trends. Discussion focuses on four key themes that shape the politics of sustainable energy transitions: (i) the short, medium and long-term temporalities of energy system change; (ii) practices of investment around clean-tech and divestment from fossil fuels; (iii) structures and scales of energy governance; and (iv) social practices around mobility, work and public health. While the effects of the pandemic continue to unfold, some of its sectoral and geographically differentiated impacts are already emerging. We conclude that the politics of sustainable energy transitions are now at a critical juncture, in which the form and direction of state support for post-pandemic economic recovery will be key.
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| 8. |
- Langley, Paul, et al.
(författare)
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Decarbonizing capital : Investment, divestment and the qualification of carbon assets
- 2021
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Ingår i: Economy and Society. - : Taylor & Francis Group. - 0308-5147 .- 1469-5766. ; 50:3, s. 494-516
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Private investment capital is now widely regarded as strategically significant to the governance of climate change. A dedicated and dynamic carbon finance sector has emerged that features techniques and practices for decarbonizing capital, facilitating investment in low-carbon projects and enterprises or enabling divestment from high-carbon firms and sectors. We bring together and develop the concepts of 'qualification' and 'assetization' to analyse how decarbonizing capital is proceeding. With specific reference to green bonds and the equities of fossil fuel corporations, we show how investment and divestment entail the qualification of things as assets with more-or-less specific carbon properties. But the qualification of assets as `low-' or 'high-carbon' is also shown to be contingent, contested and compromised, featuring contrasting modalities of qualification that are decarbonizing capital in uncertain and incomplete ways.
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