Abstract
Privately-owned, state-owned and public-private renewable energy (RE) projects are increasingly criticized by social scientists. They can involve dispossessions, management and financial inequalities, and environmental problems. Research also indicates that Community Renewable Energy (CRE) projects are not without problems and dangers. In this article, I go beyond critique of renewable energy projects, without abandoning them, in the face of mounting climate and ecological crises. I employ a productive approach to rethink RE development, that combines the diverse and community economies perspective developed by J.K. Gibson-Graham with political ecology research on alternative economies. Building on this approach and RE and CRE literature, I develop the notion of Community Renewable Energy Ecologies (CREE). CREE signify community economies involved in small-scale RE prosumption (production and consumption), or medium-scale RE prosumption and sale of energy. They adopt non-and alternative capitalist relations of ownership, production,exchange and circulation. CREE are engaged in collective ethico-political decision-making, and an oikopolitics embodying care for and affective relations with humans and more-than-humans. Such decision-making and oikopolitics are directed towards more 'thriving' and egalitarian socio-ecological futures. I identify particular ethico-political orientations for CREE and provide specific considerations for their constitutive elements (e.g. ownership,finance, labor, infrastructure). CREE reflect one of multiple possibilities for alternative sustainabilities in a pluriversal world.
Highlights
Renewable Energy (RE) development under utility-scale and smaller state-owned, privately-owned or public-private projects is increasingly criticized by social scientists –including political ecologists– given the adverse dynamics, dispossessions and environmental problems observed in different cases (e.g. Dunlap 2019; Rignall 2016)
Some academics argue that Community Renewable Energy (CRE) is a means for democratizing the energy transition, that does or can provide numerous benefits to local communities contributing to socio-ecological sustainability
Community Renewable Energy Ecologies (CREE) signify community economies engaged in small-scale energy 'prosumption', or medium-scale renewable energy prosumption and sale, according to alternative modes of Journal of Political Ecology
Summary
Renewable Energy (RE) development under utility-scale and smaller state-owned, privately-owned or public-private projects is increasingly criticized by social scientists –including political ecologists– given the adverse dynamics, dispossessions and environmental problems observed in different cases (e.g. Dunlap 2019; Rignall 2016). When motivations exclude concerns about climate change and inducing broader change in society, and rest solely on economic and social benefits for individuals and local communities, CRE is not likely to have progressive ecological outcomes, such as less consumptive lifestyles (see Berka and Creamer 2018). While these contributions are important for an economic ethics for a more-than-human world, in them environmental action tends to be considered "as a predominantly positive counterbalance to destructive capitalist processes" (Fletcher 2019: 12) This is despite evidence that environmental governance is diverse, and includes seemingly progressive policies which (can) involve regressive socio-ecological outcomes. The community economies approach includes six ethical coordinates around which community economies are being, and might be, built: 1. Survival: What do we really need to survive well? How do we balance our own survival needs and well-being with the well-being of others and the planet?
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