Aims

At the Paris United Nations Climate Conference 195 states committed to limit global warming to ‘well below’ 20C, and agreed to achieve net zero emissions by ‘the second half of this century’ (UN 2015: Annex 4.1). Energy-related greenhouse gas emissions have risen by fifty per cent since 1990 and are the largest and fastest growing driver of atmospheric emissions growth (IEA 2015). Confronting the ‘urgent threat’ of climate change (UN 2015: Preamble) requires a global shift away from dependence on fossil fuel electricity, and the IEA has called for ‘a step change in the pace of decarbonization’ (IPCC 2014; IEA 2016). However, expectations of a constant supply of electricity to fuel ever-expanding production, energy security and affordability present challenges to increasing the pace of decarbonisation.

Electricity makes up the largest share of global greenhouse gas emissions by sector and has the greatest potential for rapid decarbonisation when compared to the industry, building and transport sectors (IPCC 2014: 8, 21).

The International Energy Agency’s latest World Energy Outlook projects the renewable share of global electricity generation to reach 37% in 2040 based on current and planned policy settings; this falls well short of 60% share the IEA says is required to have a chance of limiting global warming to below 2°C and demands a more rapid transition to renewable energy if the Paris Agreement goals are to be met (IEA 2016).

A key outcome of the Paris Agreement is that ‘intended nationally-determined contributions’ for decarbonisation are to be implemented across the globe, with ‘successive’ and intensifying commitments post-2020 (UN 2015: Annex, 4.2). However, the conditions for decarbonisation vary dramatically both within and across high-income ‘post-industrial’ and low-income industrialising countries. This project compares the social relations of electricity generation in India, Germany and Australia to better understand and theorise the different preconditions for decarbonisation and adoption of renewable energy. It is driven by the following research questions:

• RQ1: What are the dominant socio-ecological relations of energy production, distribution and consumption in India, Germany and Australia?
• RQ2: How are these relations being changed across local and global scales with the increasing reliance on renewable energy?
• RQ3: What are the implications and prospects for strengthened social legitimacy of renewable energy in the three countries?

Decarbonised alternatives are already driving new electricity production in many localities around the world (IREA 2015). Decarbonising energy on the scale required in today’s growth economy, is not simply a technocratic issue, but a socio-political question. It requires a fundamental transformation of energy systems and this entails substantial structural change likely to produce social upheavals and serious conflict. As with previous energy transformations, the pathways of change will establish new relationships between capitalist society and ecology, transforming both (Moore 2015). To understand this process we use the concept of socio-ecological relations, defined as forms of social organisation that emerge in a dynamic relationship with ecological dilemmas. Our use of the term builds on and applies Jason W. Moore’s ‘world-ecology’ framework. Moore rethinks the transition and evolution of capitalism in terms of particular ways of organising nature; including technological change, colonial expansion, scientific knowledge, cultural practices and state policy. These form “specific complexes of socio-ecological relations that induce transitions from one systemic cycle to the next” (Moore 2015:162). We deploy the term to understand how the renewable energy transition, as a response to climate crisis, re-organises society and ecology.

While states and corporations are critical to the transition, they operate within wider processes of emergent socio- ecological relations (Renn 2014).

Historically, energy transitions have both produced and been shaped by large- scale transformations in socio- ecological relations. Biomass, in the form of wood, fed the energy needs of early- modern cities, constraining urban growth and depleting forests. The mining and burning of coal catalysed industrial development, providing power for cities and later, railways. Coal-fired power engendered a mass urban citizenry capable of deepening liberal democracy (Malm 2016). Coal mining had serious health impacts on workers and their communities, while urban coal smog became a major cause of death in UK cities (Freese 2005: 99-100). The transition from coal to oil diminished dependence on a large industrial workforce to guarantee supplies of energy, and tended to support authoritarian rather than democratic government (Mitchell 2012). Oil’s biophysical attributes, as a fuel that could be relatively easily transported, and transformed into a multitude of plastics, enabled new forms of social organisation, associated with new patterns of settlement and mobility across the globe. Its ecological effects were likewise distinct from coal, but shared coal’s impact on global climate through its CO2 emissions.

The different biophysical attributes of particular regimes of energy production have enabled radically different social formations, with contrasting ecological reactions. In this respect, the means of energy production characterise distinct socio-ecological relations of energy production, distribution and consumption. It was not inevitable that
coal mining would strengthen the labour movement and engender new forms of democratic participation (Mitchell 2012). Likewise, socio-ecological impacts such as coal smog, result from the way the fuel is used, not just from the character of coal itself. In this respect, biophysical attributes engender new forms of social agency, and entail new forms of ecological change, but these changes are wrought in the social process, not pre-given. Within prevailing capitalist society, energy transition sees an entanglement, or a ‘bundling’ as Moore terms it, of particular modes of institutional and corporate power, public involvement and participation, and biophysical impacts, producing distinct socio-ecological relations (Moore 2015: 301). Energy transformations, then, are relatively open-ended.

Today’s transition from fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – to decarbonised energy, including nuclear power and renewable sources such as hydro, wind and solar, is similarly establishing new socio-ecological relations of energy, and is embedded in new forms of structural change, social antagonism, cooperation and transformation. In analyzing these transitions, ideas of ‘social legitimacy’ become integral, and are more sociologically-incisive than the usual formulations of ‘social acceptance’ (Wustenhagen et al 2007), ‘energy governance’ (Michalena & Maxwell Hills 2013) or the ‘social license to operate’ used in the mining sector (Thomson & Boutilier, 2011).

The technological forms of energy, along with their uses, their social legitimacy and their ecological effects, arise within ongoing political and cultural struggles, involving a variety of social groups and issues, across livelihood and ecologies (Hughes 2004).

Existing energy regimes are entrenched, with minimal capital costs: new energy technologies require up-front costs and can bring unpredictable effects, not least in terms of social exclusion (Araújo 2014; Lovins 1976; Unruh 2006).

As Mitchell argues, in relation to renewables, the ‘building of solutions to future energy needs is also the building of new forms of collective life’, shaped by highly contingent ‘battles over the shape of future energy systems’ (2011: 238, 267). Today, such battles are embedded in the ‘negative value’ of the current energy regime, in terms of the greenhouse gases it produces, and resulting climate change (Moore 2015: 277). This project investigates these often contentious but urgently necessary transitions. An important and original aspect of the study is our comparative focus on the changing relations between public authorities, corporations, households and communities at key regional ‘hotspots’ in the energy transition. An example of such a hotspot is the AGL energy company’s plan for establishing what would be the world’s largest distributed power ‘plant’ in South Australia, based on 1000 households and businesses installing solar panels and batteries, connected to provide grid stability (AGL 2017). To address these issues, the project has the following research aims:

• RA1: To analyse the political-economic and developmental contexts for energy transitions, involving government, energy corporations and communities, across the three countries
• RA2: To compare the social legitimacy of renewable energy in selected regional ‘hotspots’ where significant renewable energy transition is underway;
• RA3: To investigate the experience, values and contestations of groups engaged in and affected by the development of renewable energy in these regions;
• RA4: To use the results of interdisciplinary comparative analysis to develop new theoretical insights into the social legitimacy of decarbonisation, as a socio-ecological transition.