New energy spaces: Towards a geographical political economy of energy transition

Bridge, Gavin; Gailing, Ludger

doi:10.1177/0308518x20939570

Cited by 94 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…Notably, political ecology requires more sustained engagement with renewable energy industries as industries that take shape in and through familiar industrial-geographical dynamics and prompt durable environmental degradation and (in)justice questions: on the factory floor, in waste byproducts and environmental harms, and within globalized supply chains and extractive geographies of materials sourcing. In this intervention, we echo Baka and Vaishnava (Forthcoming), and particularly Mulvaney (2014Mulvaney ( , 2019 and Bridge and Gailing (2020). More broadly, we join other recent arguments for "industrializing" political ecology (Barca and Bridge, 2015;Huber, 2017;Newell et al, 2017).…”

Section: Theorizing An Industrial Political Ecology Of Renewable Energysupporting

confidence: 75%

Thirty states of renewability: Controversial energies and the politics of incumbent industry

Behrsin

Knuth

Levenda

2021

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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Renewable energy advocates have positioned a wide array of technologically novel energy sources as fossil fuel alternatives. These efforts to usher in renewable energy transitions have long been shaped by definitional contestations. Political ecological scholarship tells us that such definitions are meaningful. Indeed, labeling energy sources as renewable has become a power-laden act, which may spark innovation, yet simultaneously creates openings for problematic classifications and unjust socio-ecological relations. However, we still know too little about how such classification politics are taking shape within green industrial policy formation; particularly, how they encounter incumbent industries and industrial regions. In this paper, we argue that these theoretical questions are crucial for an emerging industrial political ecology and explore three recent developments in the US context. A country that has notoriously avoided open and coordinated national industrial policy, the United States has approached the renewable energy economy in a similarly geographically fragmented fashion. We highlight a central yet under-examined tool in US energy-industrial policy: the renewable portfolio standard. Mandated by 30 states, renewable portfolio standards are the US’s central mechanism for renewable energy procurement—yet renewable portfolio standards diverge substantially from state to state in terms of the energy sources they classify and incentivize as renewable. We argue that industrial interests and state governments have together capitalized upon renewable portfolio standards’ malleability to support regionally significant sectors, including “dirty” industries and industrial wastes. These industries, often controversially, thereby position themselves for rebranding and new forms of value capture.

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Section: Theorizing An Industrial Political Ecology Of Renewable Energysupporting

confidence: 75%

Thirty states of renewability: Controversial energies and the politics of incumbent industry

Behrsin

Knuth

Levenda

2021

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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“…To do so, we suggest that engagement with the literature that is closely attuned to understanding the socio-material characteristics of energy transitions and territories [8,10,12,14] is fruitful here. Our objective, in the next section, is not to offer a comprehensive literature review, but instead to identify from it key areas under which understanding and analysis of the role of regions and regional policy-making in RE deployment can be enhanced.…”

Section: The Regional Development Framing Of Renewable Energy Deployment and Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The socio-materialities of energy transitions: from urban to regional Emerging literature that seeks to understand the sociomaterial characteristics of energy transitions lends well-formed conceptual tools to the task of unravelling the relationship between energy transitions and their geographical implications [8]. Here, we discuss briefly these contributions and then move to highlight how these approaches can be helpful in addressing questions of energy decision-making, how competing interests are mediated, and what complexities can undermine/ empower regional agency.…”

Section: The Regional Development Framing Of Renewable Energy Deployment and Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

Policy-relevant insights for regional renewable energy deployment

Laurentis

Pearson

2021

Energ Sustain Soc

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Background The paper explores how regional actors engage with energy systems, flows and infrastructures in order to meet particular goals and offers a fine-tuned analysis of how differences arise, highlighting the policy-relevant insights that emerge. Methods Using a novel framework, the research performs a comparative case study analysis of three regions in Italy and two of the devolved territories of the UK, Wales and Scotland, drawing on interviews and documentary analysis. Results The paper shows that acknowledging the socio-materialities of renewable energy allows a fine-tuned analysis of how institutions, governance and infrastructure can enable/constrain energy transitions and policy effectiveness at local and regional levels. The heuristic adopted highlights (i) the institutions that matter for renewable energy and their varied effects on regional renewable energy deployment; (ii) the range of agencies involved in strategically establishing, contesting and reproducing institutions, expectations, visions and infrastructure as renewable energy deployment unfolds at the regional level and (iii) the nature and extent of infrastructure requirements for and constraints on renewable energy delivery and how they affect the regional capacity to shape infrastructure networks and facilitate renewable energy deployment. The paper shows how the regions investigated developed their institutional and governance capacity and made use of targets, energy visions and spatial planning to promote renewable energy deployment. It shows that several mediating factors emerge from examining the interactions between regional physical resource endowments and energy infrastructure renewal and expansion. The analysis leads to policy-relevant insights into what makes for renewable energy deployment. Conclusion The paper contributes to research that demonstrates the role of institutional variations and governance as foundations for geographical differences in the adoption of renewable energy, and carries significant implications for policy thinking and implementation. It shows why and how policy-makers need to be more effective in balancing the range of goals/interests for renewable energy deployment with the peculiarities and specificities of the regional contexts and their infrastructures. The insights presented help to explain how energy choices and outcomes are shaped in particular places, how differences arise and operate in practice, and how they need to be taken into account in policy design, policy-making and implementation.

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“…Moreover, such an apolitical approach does not fully account for the spatial or geographical dynamics of transitions (Bridge et al, 2013;Bridge & Gailing, 2020;Huber & McCarthy, 2017;Newell, 2020;Newell & Simms, 2020a;Roberts et al, 2018;Sovacool, 2017). The literature on socio-technical transitions (STT), for example, also recognises these shortcomings.…”

Section: Energy System Transformationmentioning

confidence: 99%