“Power farmers” in north India and new energy producers around the world: Three critical fields for multiscalar research

Abstract

An increasing number of people around the world are directly involved in the financing and work of energy production through practices such as decentralized generation, re-scaled resource extraction, and energy localization. Many of these new energy producers are farmers seeking to diversify their income streams – raising questions about land-use, labour, and livelihoods that cut across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Such complex, multiscalar dynamics push at the boundaries of contemporary energy research and require researchers to engage in the ongoing development of critical and holistic analytical approaches. Contributing to those efforts, and reporting on solar initiatives including the state-led Power Farmers program in northern India – a country where ‘solar farming’ occupies a central position in national energy policy – this article calls for energy research to apply insights from three related fields of action and analysis: food sovereignty, eco-swaraj (or Radical Ecological Democracy), and critical environmental justice. Scrutinizing interrelated issues of power and autonomy, inequality, and ecological regeneration, the three fields offer vital tools for future research on new energy producers and for social struggles that confront emergent energy justice concerns.