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Paper Short Abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic material gathered in the Greek town of Florina, the paper traces the infrastructural, social, and economic worlds that lignite assembled over the years and argues that ongoing energy transition processes suspend various grids of relationality.

Paper Abstract:

The European Green Deal sets out to turn Europe into the first carbon neutral continent in the world by 2050. In the case of Greece, the path to decarbonisation marks the end of the county’s long history of lignite dependence. In a speech delivered at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit, Prime Minister Mitsotakis announced the closing of most lignite-fired power plants by 2023 and a complete end to lignite use by 2028, thus inaugurating the country’s post-lignite transition era and turning Greece into a ‘frontrunner’ in European decarbonisation. Drawing on ethnographic material gathered in the Greek town of Florina between 2022 and 2023, the paper traces the infrastructural, social, and economic worlds that lignite assembled over the years. It then zooms into processes of decay and ruination, and addresses the various renewable energy infrastructures that are taking over the spaces that were once animated by lignite. The paper argues that ongoing energy transition processes suspend various grids of relationality, previously enabled through lignite and its infrastructures. The land that was previously valuable by means of its extractive potential and established relations of recompense between landholders and the state, is growing worthless. The vast economies of clientelism that were previously fuelled by lignite are gradually giving way to renewable energy mega-projects, the financial benefits of which are questionable and available to select few. Finally, the rapid erection of massive wind turbines and vast photovoltaic fields severs ties between people and their material and social environments — often in irreversible ways.