Politicizing hydroelectric power plants in Portugal: spatio-temporal injustices and psychosocial impacts of renewable energy colonialism in the Global North

Reacting to the Rural Burden: Understanding Opposition to Utility‐Scale Solar Development in Upstate New York☆

“…These and other qualitative studies (Avila 2018;Batel and Küpers 2022;Broto 2016;Sayan 2017) have highlighted the relevance of rural targeting, peripheralization, and colonial relations to renewable energy siting conflicts. These processes are complex and multifaceted (Batel and Devine-Wright 2017;Batel and Küpers 2022), and therefore their full extent and impact cannot be measured in survey research. Instead, we measure the perception of distributive and procedural injustice, place attachment, and peripheral identity to quantify their relationship with USS opposition in order to provide a better understanding of these discrete factors, whether they cohere into a larger consideration of rural burden, and their importance-relative to other factors-to understanding opposition to USS.…”

“…Murphy and Smith similarly noted the role of resource peripheralization in shaping opposition to renewable energy in the Scottish highlands, where many opponents used cultural arguments about their connections to place to counter the developer's depiction of the proposed site as barren and empty (Murphy and Smith 2013). These and other qualitative studies (Avila 2018;Batel and Küpers 2022;Broto 2016;Sayan 2017) have highlighted the relevance of rural targeting, peripheralization, and colonial relations to renewable energy siting conflicts. These processes are complex and multifaceted (Batel and Devine-Wright 2017;Batel and Küpers 2022), and therefore their full extent and impact cannot be measured in survey research.…”

Do the ends justify the means? Problematizing social acceptance and instrumentally-driven community engagement in proposed energy projects

“…Then, we turn a critical eye to CE efforts across multiple energy infrastructure projects. While the cases unfold across two different national contexts in the UK and Canada, they are similar in that they are proposed in rural places which have been known as 'agricultural working landscapes,' spaces which some researchers are reconceptualizing as "'sacrifice zones' of the green energy economy" (Batel and Küpers 2022). We compare experiences and perceptions of CE across different cases, discussing differences when community members perceive CE to be pursued instrumentally, and when they do not.…”

Representing personal and common futures: Insights and new connections between the theory of social representations and the pragmatic sociology of engagements

“…To continue the example above, the industrial order of worth as materialised in the green energy transition and the related deployment of large‐scale wind and solar farms near rural communities, is clearly encroaching upon people's engagement in the regime of familiarity. This happens, namely, by disturbing communities' relations with the places where they live and the futures they look forward to in those places (Groves, 2015), and by accentuating inequalities between urban and rural communities (Batel & Küpers, 2023). As suggested by Boltanski (2011), the sense of shared injustice and increased level of reflexivity created by this disruption, motivates the creative contestation of hegemonic institutions in the regime of justification, in which a speaker posits themselves as “a spokesperson for a potential future community” (Boltanski, 2011, p. 100).…”