Paper short abstract:

This paper explores intersections between energy forms, infrastructures and evil. We live in an era in which the moralization of energy is increasingly common and necessary. We discuss here the secret and not-so-secret evils wrought by fossil fuel infrastructures and electricity grids.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper we explore intersections between energy forms, infrastructures and evil. Some of these are better known than others. We discuss, for example, the politics, sentiments and worldviews enabled by fossil fuel infrastructures, which seem ever more clearly evil when viewed in the context of anthropocenic phenomena such as global warming, species extinction and oceanic acidification. That fossil fuel extraction inevitably summons dead life from deep under the earth creates a dark canvas for the moral imagination, necrocratic impulses that have been brilliantly captured by writers like Reza Negarestani and artists like Marina Zurkow. Studies of devastating "oil curses" in Africa mirror the more invisible curse of carbon democracy's inability to conceptualize a future beyond oil. Based on our research on renewable energy development in Mexico, we also wish to explore the lesser known evils of electrical grids. On the one hand, grids appear to enable a great many goods (artificial light and heat, modern conveniences, all the technologies of the digital era). On the other their design to make electricity available at all times without interruption virtually necessitates reliance upon the dangers of carbon and nuclear energy forms. More than this, grids are integral apparatuses of centralized state governance and surveillance. In sum, we live in an era where the moralization of energy is increasingly common and necessary. It is time to think carefully through the evils and goods that energy infrastructures provide.