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- Convenors:
-
Katja Müller
(Merseburg University of Applied Sciences)
James Goodman (University of Technology, Sydney)
Chima Michael Anyadike-Danes (Durham University)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- 6 College Park (6CP), 01/035
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 27 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The panel engages with contemporary energy and climate politics' commoning and decommoning dynamics, unfolding across multiple sectors and fields of social life.
Long Abstract:
Recognition of global dependence on climate stability defines climate as a global common, as a focus and object for policy and governance. With energy responsible for the bulk of greenhouse gas emissions, climate crisis produces a new global energy commons, embodied in the imperative for fossil fuel phase-out. These climate and energy commons are routinely 'enclosed', for monetisation, commodification and accumulation. From carbon credits to power purchase agreements, climate and energy policyis often directed at de-commonising and marketising for profit. But there is also a persistent commoning imperative, driven by ongoing failure in emissions reduction and expressed in new forms of climate solidarity or in distributed and socially-owned renewable energy. These commoning-decommoning dynamics are central to climate and energy politics. In the present-day context of rapid energy transformations such dynamics are unfolding across multiple sectors and fields of social life. We call for papers centred on such dynamics, across any aspect of contemporary energy and climate politics.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 27 July, 2022, -Gareth Bryant (University of Sydney) Devleena Ghosh (University of Technology Sydney) Priya Pillai (University of Technology, Sydney)
Paper short abstract:
This article evaluates the winners and losers of the energy transition playing out around the Pavagada solar park in Karnataka, India.
Paper long abstract:
This article evaluates the winners and losers of the energy transition playing out around the Pavagada solar park in Karnataka, India. We analyse how the innovative land leasing and competitive tendering mechanisms of the ‘Pavagada model’ have shaped the socio-ecological relations and outcomes of the project. We show the solar park has provided investors with low-risk returns, state electricity distributers with low-cost power, and larger landowners with new income streams. However, we find that the model is entrenching colonial, gender, and caste-based inequalities and oppressions, particularly for landless agricultural labourers who have lost their sources of livelihood. We argue that when renewable energy policy is primarily concerned with reducing costs and managing risks for private investors and state actors, the potential benefits of energy transition will not be equitably shared. The case of Pavagada demonstrates the need for democratic ownership and control of renewable energy.
Chima Michael Anyadike-Danes (Durham University)
Paper short abstract:
This presentation examines geothermal mine energy's development as a resource in non-metropolitan County Durham. Specifically, it discusses the various ways in which it is envisaged that the county's residents might access it.
Paper long abstract:
It is three decades since coal was mined in County Durham. By contrast, in the early 20th century many tonnes of coal were won annually. Moreover, at the industry's height close to one hundred and seventy thousand men worked for the collieries as miners.
Evidence of coal mining's profound impact on the region is to be found not just in the toponyms of places, the landscape, or the region's dialect, but in the plans that are now being made for the mines themselves. The Coal Authority currently manages Britain's shuttered mines overseeing everything from remediation to ensuring that mine water does not contaminate aquifers. However, in the last decade or so members of this organisation have come to realise that warm mine water might be a potentially valuable source of thermal energy.
A sizeable minority of people in the United Kingdom suffer from fuel poverty and analysts predict that due to the current energy crisis this will only worsen. The Coal Authority believes that with twenty-five per cent of homes lying above former coal mines geothermal mine energy might provide a solution, while also decarbonising heat. Several developments in County Durham have been explored as potential test sites and a number of county residents have had the technology explained to them as something that could be a treasure or a gift because of its ability to reduce heating costs. In this presentation, I explore the role that practices of commoning or decommoning might play in creating such a system.
Jonathan Marshall (University of Technology, Sydney)
Paper short abstract:
Climate generosity is based on the idea of giving useful climate technology to communities, without going through the complex organisation of generating a formal commons, or struggling over ownership and control. This idea is illustrated by community action movements in the Bega Region of NSW.
Paper long abstract:
Capitalist property comes from appropriation - what Marx called primitive accumulation - not referring to so-called primitive societies but to the early stages of capitalism itself. It has since become obvious that often violent appropriation of public goods, ideas and land is necessary to the continued function of capitalism, as with the destruction of aboriginal lands in Australia.
This paper suggests that capitalist ideas of property get in the way of a successful energy transition, and obstruct State action, and this can be, to some extent overcome by a new venture in commoning. This venture demonstrated by groups like Clean Energy for Eternity in the Bega region of NSW involves community gifting of solar panels to local community buildings. These are common property, but not a commons as such. It circumvents problems with organising commons and with disputes over ownership. It also signals the local council that people are supportive of renewable energy action, and will put their own money into the common good.