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Short abstract:

This paper explores the moral frontiers of the energy transition through the case of natural gas expansion in Ghana and its contradictions.

Long abstract:

In Ghana, new oil and gas discoveries at a time of global decarbonization and energy transition have put into question the future of the country’s hydrocarbon reserves and its promises of prosperity and development. As Ghana anticipates the risk of stranded assets, a discourse of carbon justice has emerged around new oil and gas extraction. In this paper, I explore the assemblage of the “moral frontiers” of the energy transition through the case of natural gas expansion in Ghana. Based on ethnographic fieldwork since 2019, I focus on the Atuabo gas processing plant in Ghana's Western Region, which was built in 2016 in the midst of an acute energy crisis to secure the country’s energy future by processing indigenous gas from the oilfields to power the nation’s electricity grid. Amidst growing opposition to and declining investment in oil, natural gas in Atuabo is presented as a bridging fuel that reconciles, physically and ethically, the contradictions of global decarbonization imperatives with local demands for industrialization, energy access, security and sovereignty. Building on the literature on just transitions, technopolitics and infrastructures, I argue that the materiality of gas infrastructure in Atuabo (including the land acquisition and tenure process, the siting of the plant, the take-or-pay model of the IPPs it powers, the pricing of gas, and the contested environmental impact of the plant) shapes moral and political claims about carbon justice, responsibility, autonomy and independence that speak to the contestation and contradictions of energy transitions elsewhere.