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Energy transition, as both a material process and a process of reimagining energy futures, offers fertile grounds for broad societal transformation. However, the current state of power and politics in the historical fossil fuel regions of North America presents unique challenges. This paper explores initiatives that leverage former fossil fuels sites, infrastructure, and labor for renewable energy projects, and examines their position in prefiguring alternative energy futures in fossil fuel regions. These initiatives, which we introduce as hybrid energy initiatives (HEIs), can alleviate material, political, and cultural barriers to energy transitions by accounting for present contexts in regions of historical fossil fuel extraction, developing partnerships between renewable energy advocates and traditional fossil fuel stakeholders, and building legitimacy through discourses of equity and justice. However, discourses and technologies do not guarantee the operationalization of the just transition narratives HEIs often draw upon. We illustrate this in two case studies of initiatives, one in Appalachia, USA, and the other in Alberta, Canada, that position themselves as innovative endeavors in the utilization of former fossil fuel sites and infrastructures for new solar energy projects. Contributing to just transition scholarship we demonstrate an approach for considering the prefiguring potential of energy innovations and how elements of energy justice can be rendered acceptable within a political climate unfavorable to climate and just transition policies.
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Fossil fuel interests in Puerto Rico: Perceptions of incumbent power and discourses of delay
This study explores perceptions of fossil fuel interests and the role narratives of fossil fuel obstruction play in slowing down the renewable energy transition in Puerto Rico. We analyzed interviews conducted with 56 “energy actors” engaged in Puerto Rico’s energy system about their visions of the system’s future and perceptions of the influence of different actors in promoting change or reinforcing the status-quo. The analysis also examined the use of discourses of delay in participant interviews using a framework proposed by Lamb et al. (2020). Our interviews revealed that a wide range of energy actors perceived obstruction by fossil fuel interests as shaping Puerto Rico’s energy transition, and used discourses of delay to describe Puerto Rico’s energy transition, but also employed narratives that countered this obstruction and resisted fossil fuel interests. The results depict the conflicted nature of Puerto Rico’s energy transition: on the one hand there was widespread agreement across a wide range of actors that the future of Puerto Rico’s energy system would eventually be renewable based, and at the same time, there were signi昀椀cant doubts that a renewable transition could or would occur. The complex interplay among perceptions of the influence of fossil fuel interests, discourses of delay, and narratives of resistance and community power offers insights into why renewable energy deployment has been slow in Puerto Rico, despite the possibility of a rapid transition after Hurricane Maria devastated the energy system in 2017 and ambitious energy policies were passed.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1947017
- PAR ID:
- 10507693
- Publisher / Repository:
- Energy Research and Social Science
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Energy Research & Social Science
- Volume:
- 111
- Issue:
- C
- ISSN:
- 2214-6296
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 103467
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2024.103467
