Political power and renewable energy futures: A critical review

By Matthew J. Burke, J. Stephens. 2017

708 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Inspired by the energy democracy movement, this conceptual review critically explores relationships between concentrated or distributed renewable energy and political power. Advocates assert that because the renewable energy transition is fundamentally a political struggle, efforts to shift from fossil fuels and decarbonize societies will not prove effective without confronting and destabilizing dominant systems of energy power. The objectives of this paper include: 1) theorizing and exploring the relationships between renewable energy and political power, 2) critically assessing tensions associated with an energy democracy agenda, and 3) drawing out the implications for democratizing renewable energy development in practice. Distributed energy-politics posits that distributed energy sources and technologies enable and organize distributed political power and vice versa. Efforts are underway to find ways to re-organize distributed energy flows into aggregated and concentrated stocks of energy and other forms of political power. More democratic renewable energy futures may benefit from strengthening democratic practices and outcomes, extending democratization of energy systems across all components, stages and end uses, and sharpening positions relative to dominant pressures of capitalism and market ideology, the ideology of unlimited growth, and the modernist/industrialist agenda. Renewable energy systems offer a possibility but not a certainty for more democratic energy futures.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Pollution, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/61b51491131441b1e4c52c7353ab9ee32c84a8fd

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In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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Citations in the corpus

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Technology for the Sustainable Future of Stationary Applications (2019, background): “Unconventional energy sources have gained and will continue to gain an increasing share in energy systems around the world [1], due to both the research and political efforts [2–8] involved in their development, as well as due to the price increases of energy obtained by traditional methods [9].”
Critical Review on PV MPPT Techniques: Classical, Intelligent and Optimisation (2020, background): “The advancement of renewable energy sources has been a critical point to supply and meet the decentralised necessities of the country part [1].”
Asymmetric impact of fiscal decentralization and environmental innovation on carbon emissions: Evidence from highly decentralized countries (2021, background): “Besides, the environmental justice advocates and energy activists divert their attention and struggle to develop democracy for energy, which is a manifestation of decentralized movements at the grassroots level.(7,8) Globally, central governments are agreed to decentralize the responsibilities to th”
Energy democracy: Goals and policy instruments for sociotechnical transitions (2017, background): “This paper examines the goals and policy instruments of the energy democracy movement through the lens of policy mixes, while the second review explores the theoretical relationships between renewable energy systems and democratic politics more broadly [30].”
Renewable energy and geopolitics: A review (2020, background): “to be conducive to “energy democracy” because renewables involve more democratic processes than fossil fuels in their management, distribution and use (Burke and Stephens [155]).”
Environmental education in transition: A critical review of recent research on climate change and energy education (2019, background): “Beyond mitigating climate change, justifications for an energy transition include reducing the public health risks of fossil fuels, creating local and regional jobs, and reducing the political and economic power that is centralized in large fossil fuel companies (Burke & Stephens, 2018).”