Wonderland of technology? How energy landscapes reveal inequalities and injustices of the German Energiewende

Abstract

The aim of this study is to gain a better understanding of what characterizes energy landscapes in general and to what extent they are an expression of social inequalities and injustices in the specific case of the German Energiewende. In the sense of a review, the central findings will be integrated into the spatial concept ‘production of space’ by Henri Lefebvre. This is intended to uncover those social spaces that are produced by the powerful actors of the Energiewende and that become unequal and unjust energy landscapes on the basis of neoliberal spatial concepts. In addition, it is necessary to discuss a conceptual question that has hardly been considered so far: whether and how can energy landscapes be distinguished from other landscapes and where exactly should the lines of demarcation be drawn in the context of debates on energy justice? It is shown that spatial demarcation based on the representative, symbolic, discursive, and thus material-abstract phenomena of landscape is an appropriate way to understand the population‘s resistance to the dominant territorial-institutional structures of the Energiewende. The study concludes that the achievement of climate goals appears realistic if the production of sustainable energy landscapes is primarily understood as the production of a discourse about sustainability, equity, and justice.