Harvesting lithium and sun in the Andes: Exploring energy justice and the new materialities of energy transitions

Abstract

This paper states that energy transition, being materially grounded, leads to the social construction of resources, such as lithium, and new forms of energy production, such as solar energy. The phenomenon proceeds through public and entrepreneurial green discourses positivizing these forms of extraction, presented by their promoters as sustainable activities. This contributes both to local and global energy transition towards carbon zero behaviours and sustainable development in Argentina and Chile. A geohistorical approach of the territory and the first geohistory of the extractive companies (seniority, know-how and territorial anchorage) in the region help to better understand the ongoing territorial turn of marginal territories and local resource commodification in the territory we call: Altiplania. From a State and entrepreneurial perspective, local lithium and solar exploitation and connections can be analyzed as a self-sustaining cycle of energy transition that reinforces local energy transition by strengthening local networks and enlarging energy access in remote areas. However, the process can also be read as a continuum of green grabbing practices developed by mining and energy stakeholders which reinforce and even extend pre-existing processes of commodification of nature and accumulation in the region for extra local purposes and, questions the role that energy transition policies and associated infrastructures may play in entranching spatial unevenness and socio-environmental and energy (in)justices.