Struggles over solar in the United States: Oppositional coalitions and the limits of territorial resentment

Abstract

With the expansion of renewable infrastructure, struggles over land use have raised concerns about the uneven impacts of utility solar on rural, energy producing communities. Engaging the framework of colonial racial capitalism, we contribute to energy scholarship focused on the social and cultural impacts of decarbonization through an ethnographic and archival study of organized opposition emerging in Central Washington. In 2020, residents of Goldendale, WA mobilized to create CEASE–Citizens Educated Against Solar Energy–working strategically with members of the Yakama Nation, to challenge the siting process. We ask the following questions: What motivates organized opposition to the solar siting process? What are the opportunities and constraints to building coalitions across settler and Indigenous rural geographies? What can these coalitions tell us about the future of energy justice? In our case study, we found CEASE, a rural populist leaning grassroots organization, to briefly join efforts with the Yakama Nation, viewing the state in misalignment with rural identities and livelihoods. Yet, opposition forming through a focus on historically and geographically specific understandings of private property and the wage relation complicate shared visions for energy justice. Here, ideas and feelings around property, work, and futures remain contradictory, incomplete, and dynamic, meaning a singular settler vision does not need to be the only one charting energy futures.