Alternative energy capital of the world? Fix, risk, and solar energy in Los Angeles’ urban periphery

Abstract

California is one of the most climate-challenged regions of North America and is considered the vanguard of climate action in the United States. California's climate policy framework has strongly promoted the expansion of renewable energy infrastructure, and the state generates more solar energy than any other in the nation. Using the case of Lancaster, a city of 170,000 residents in northern Los Angeles County seeking to position itself as the “alternative energy capital of the world,” this article examines private investments in solar energy infrastructure as a response to California's entwined economic and ecological crises. Drawing on recent scholarship on socioecological fix, we argue that private accumulation through renewable energy infrastructures in California has required both the presence of crisis conditions and innovations in financial risk mitigation that manage tensions between mobility and fixity inherent in the formation of fixed capital. However, a narrow focus on short-term financial risk obviates other forms of risk, including future impacts of extreme weather on grid infrastructure and electricity supply. While this does not foreclose opportunities for solar energy infrastructure to support positive social and ecological transformation, we argue that such opportunities may be constrained under a mode of energy transition predicated on private accumulation.

Solidaric solarities: Governance principles for transforming solar power relations

“…For example, incumbent fossil fuel energy regimes (e.g., coal) continue to exercise dominance over the energy sector in India, indicating rigid energy systems that resist renewable transitions (Roy and Schaffartzik 2021). In Lancaster, California, solar energy developers employed globalised financial innovations in the context of economic crises and regulatory changes that spread financial risks across projects and transferred them to the community (Kennedy and Stock 2022). Policymakers leveraged narrowly-conceived metrics to legitimate inadequate action towards solar uptake in Portugal's energy system (Sareen 2020).…”

Introduction: Uneven geographies of electricity capital

“…However, the overlap of public and private interest in electricity capital requires greater attention because it is a site where the pace and form of decarbonization is managed. Utilities have sought customer and state support to recover stranded financial liabilities fixed in fossil capital and switch to renewable energy capitalization (Knuth, 2017; Le Billon and Kristoffersen, 2020; Lehr, 2019; Trabish, 2019; Spivey, 2020; Kennedy and Stock, 2021). Regulation – however opaque, ineffective, or contentious (such as when shaped through a process that Leah Stokes (2020: 25) describes as “organized combat”) – enables and circumscribes profitability.…”

New political ecologies of renewable energy

“…Spivey (this volume) argues that in answering this kind of question political ecology requires a better theory of technology, including through deepening its conceptual engagements with STS. Spivey particularly considers tools needed to investigate understudied transition technologies and technological concerns such as networked transmission infrastructures and power load balancing (see also Kennedy and Stock, 2021;Turley et al, 2022). However, his argument speaks also to longer discussions across political ecology, political economy and STS.…”

“…In a related theoretical vein, and with Mitchell's (2011) Carbon Democracy as a frequently cited exemplar and inspiration, several contributions here work to integrate attention to materialities, assemblages and “artifactual politics” that has long been advanced by STS—with similar histories too of contestation and evolving synthesis with political economy and political ecology (e.g. Kirsch and Mitchell, 2004; McFarlane and Anderson, 2011 vs Brenner et al, 2011 and Appadurai, 2015, but then Ranganathan, 2015; Demaria and Schindler, 2016; Baker and McGuirk, 2017 and others). In expanding this toolkit for analysis of renewable energy transition, authors contend with such preexisting critiques of these approaches.…”