Presentation short abstract

As renewable energy expands, many communities oppose local projects. Often labeled as “NIMBY,” their views are seldom explored. This study examines why they resist, when they would support renewables, and what alternative energy pathways they propose for the case of Greece

Presentation long abstract

Large-scale renewable energy (RE) projects are expanding worldwide as governments accelerate decarbonization. In Greece, however, this expansion has sparked widespread local opposition, particularly against industrial-scale wind and solar developments in ecologically and culturally territories. Although such resistance is often dismissed as NIMBYism or climate skepticism, evidence shows that local movements articulate diverse motivations and, often, constructive alternative visions. We contribute to this debate by examining the values, concerns, and proposals of opposition groups in Greece, with specific attention to their alignment with degrowth-oriented ideas. Drawing on 195 survey responses from iparticipants in RE opposition movements across the country, we combine descriptive statistics, KMeans clustering, and thematic analysis to explore: why local actors oppose RE megaprojects; the conditions under which they would support renewable energy; and the alternative energy pathways they envision, including whether these resonate with degrowth principles.

Our findings reveal that opposition to RE in Greece is heterogeneous and not an outright rejection of the energy transition. Most respondents acknowledge the urgency of climate change and support RE, but reject projects perceived as environmentally damaging, unjust, or imposed without consultation. Cluster analysis identifies three attitudinal profiles: Degrowth Localists, who prioritize sufficiency, local autonomy, and degrowth; Status-Quo Energy Supporters, who prefer centralized fossil-based systems; and Techno-Industrial Optimists, who support nuclear and techno-fixes.

Thematic analysis shows that many participants articulate alternative imaginaries rooted in democratic governance, ecological care, and territorial justice. Rather than rejecting renewables, they emphasize energy reduction, well-sited decentralized systems while challenging profit-driven models and growth-oriented development.

Presentation short abstract

This paper examines how solar energy expansion in Mexico reshapes socio-territorial relations to secure land access, showing how historical inequalities and territorial narratives are mobilized to enable the installation of solar infrastructure.

Presentation long abstract

In the face of climate collapse and the progressive decline of fossil fuels, so-called low-carbon energies have gained centrality in climate, development, and energy security agendas. Framed by the dominant discourse of the “energy transition”, projects such as large-scale solar parks are reshaping socio-territorial relations worldwide, especially in the peripheries of the world-economy.

When embedded in the logic of capitalist accumulation, and implemented by transnational corporations, this transition follows material and technical requirements oriented toward profitability. These requirements intertwine with existing socio-ecological relations in territories and in doing so transform local ways of organizing life, contributing to broader reconfigurations of the social metabolism.

This research aims to explore how the implementation of solar energy infrastructure in Mexico instrumentalizes and reorganizes pre-existent socio-territorial relations to secure access to land. Through a dialogue between empirical findings and conceptual frameworks such as solar capitalism (Ávila-Calero, 2025), extractivism, and generative powers of capitalism (Bear et al. 2023), the analysis traces mechanisms through which solar energy promoters facilitate infrastructural installation in Mexico. These mechanisms include the refunctionalisation of socio-economic formations (notably the ejidos), the mobilization of historical marginalisations anchored in class, gender, and ethnicity, as well as the deployment of discourses of “empty” or “environmentally degraded” lands.

The research argues that these strategies are not only effects but socio-territorial reconfigurations required by the corporate energy transition. They show that territorialized social relations operate as the interface through which hegemonic energy agendas attempt to materialize, while also becoming potential sites of dispute.

Presentation short abstract

Solar projects in Rajasthan promise green transitions but often trigger ecological harm and social injustice. Drawing on political ecology and agrarian studies, this paper analyzes rural resistance strategies and power dynamics shaping land, livelihoods, and governance in contested energy futures.

Presentation long abstract

While large, technologically oriented environmental “fixes” centered on net-zero ambitions and renewable energy targets dominate sustainability transition imaginaries, such endeavors have resulted in growing levels of opposition. Those resisting renewable energy projects contend that, on the ground, these “fixes” too often produce ecologically destructive and socially regressive energy futures. Drawing from political ecology and agrarian studies, we develop, apply, and discuss an analytical understanding of what we term the “repertoire of rural resistance”—a diverse set of practices, sites and strategies that figure prominently in political protests and mobilization efforts focused on defending landscapes, livelihoods, and identity. Based on seven person-months of fieldwork in Rajasthan and New Delhi, we analyze resistance to industrial-scale solar energy projects in the state of Rajasthan, then discuss insights using the social regulation concepts of institutional change and accountability change. The first addresses shifts in norms and values that regulate legitimacy; the second explores how sanctions and incentives align actors’ behaviors in relation to justice, law, security, ecology and other ideals. Together, these concepts enable us to theorize what the myriad forms of resistance to large solar energy projects, and state and corporate responses to them, reveal about power relations and socioecological dynamics in the context of competing claims on land. This place-based empirical research illuminates dynamics of energy transitions, agrarian struggle, and resource governance at the nexus of climate change and contemporary capitalism.

Presentation short abstract

The research analyzes the socio-environmental implications of lithium mining in the Salar de Atacama, examining public-private strategies and community resistances to Green Sacrifice.

Presentation long abstract

The research analyzes the socio-environmental implications of lithium mining in the Salar de Atacama, in the context of the global expansion of electromobility as a climate change mitigation strategy. From a militant and situated perspective, the study examines public-private strategies aimed at legitimizing lithium extractivism as a necessary and supposedly responsible activity. The methodology combines interviews conducted between 2019 and 2023 with community leaders, farmers, and activists; participatory workshops with Lickanantay communities; document review; social media monitoring; and participation in various events related to lithium extractivism in Chile and other Andean territories. Between 2023 and 2024, action-research methods were used by supporting Indigenous communities in consultation processes related to new mining contracts and the Protected Salt Flats Network in the implementation of the National Lithium Strategy led by the government of Gabriel Boric.

Results show that corporate frameworks based on shared value and associativity fail to resolve the conflict generated by the expansion of companies like Albemarle and SQM. Tensions persist, reflected in social mobilizations and controversial political decisions such as the CODELCO-SQM MoU. At the same time, a sophistication of public-private strategies is observed, aiming to establish a "governance of dispossession" model in territories progressively turned into Green Sacrifice Zones. In response, communities strengthen technical capacities and civil alliances, demanding informed participation. Long-term, sometimes less visible resistances materialize in the persistance of livelihoods based on reciprocity with the land, agriculture, herding, and community water management.

Presentation short abstract

The Basque Hydrogen Corridor (BH2C) is supposed to decarbonize the industrial and energy sectors of the Basque Country by 2050. We examine the socio-metabolic reconfigurations it drives and the risks of a transition that may reproduce extractivism while creating new green sacrifice zones.

Presentation long abstract

The BH2C, driven by energy and petrochemical companies such as Repsol and its subsidiary Petronor, is attracting massive amounts of public and private investment, proyecting mega-infrastructures such as electrolyzers and hydrogen pipelines, as well as research centers and projects focused on optimizing electrolysis and transportation. Promoted as one of the keys of the energy transition, green hydrogen exemplifies the broader shift toward “low-carbon” infrastructures that reorganize socio-metabolic relations (Martínez-Alier 2009). However, despite the enormous capital investment, there are significant doubts regarding the energy efficiency and profitability of green hydrogen, along with growing concerns about its volatility, toxicity, and overall environmental impact.

While green hydrogen narratives push forward its expansion, the high energy and material demand (Kane & Gil 2022), as well as the economic costs of production bring into question its viability and desirability. Our research follows the infrastructural developments of the BH2C and their implications for the local community and ecosystems of Meatzaldea (mining zone in Basque), a historical mining region which we consider a “sacrifice zone” (Juskus 2023). We are particularly interested in approaching the entanglement of political, energetic and economic struggle in the region from an ecofeminist and political ecology perspective that analyzes the power relations at play, seeking to better understand who benefits from its deployment or who is the transition for. In short, we aim to study the type of energy transition this "hydrogen valley" is promoting and its socio-ecological implications.

Presentation short abstract

En este trabajo realizaremos un análisis sobre distintos casos y escenarios conflictivos generados por proyectos e iniciativas vinculadas a diversas fuentes energéticas.

Presentation long abstract

En este trabajo realizaremos un análisis sobre distintos casos y escenarios conflictivos generados por proyectos e iniciativas vinculadas a diversas fuentes energéticas. Para cada una de ellas hemos realizado un rastreo documental, tomando los casos donde se aprecia la existencia de conflictividades de caracter socioambiental en las que puedan advertirse actores colectivos (grupos o asociaciones de vecinos, ONG’s, organizaciones ambientalistas, asambleas, multisectoriales, organizaciones políticas, comunidades o grupos de familias) y repertorios de acción colectiva (protestas, movilizaciones, cortes de calle, marchas, reclamos judiciales, juntada de firmas, petitorios, declaraciones públicas, promoción de medidas legales-judiciales y pedidos de información, entre otros).

La indagación se basó exclusivamente en el rastreo y selección de fuentes secundarias: notas periódicas, declaraciones en redes sociales, portales y medios de comunicación audiovisuales, así como también producciones científicas (artículos publicados y actas de congresos). Para realizar el rastreo nos valimos adicionalmente de la información disponible en el Atlas de Justicia Ambiental, que constituye una experiencia de mapeo colaborativo para el monitoreo de conflictos ambientales a nivel global.

Cabe destacar que el trabajo se llevó adelante sobre la base del análisis de casos testigos, seleccionados por su relevancia, por la visibilidad que tuvieron en el espacio público y/o por los resultados derivados de la contienda. No ha sido motivación de este estudio cuantificar los conflictos ambientales detectados, si no más bien aportar una mirada cualitativa que ilustre las características y modalidades que puede adoptar la conflictividad social para cada una de las fuentes de energía abordadas.

Presentation short abstract

The West has abandoned its earlier leadership in climate policy as technological and economic competition with emerging Asian powers—especially China—intensifies. Instead, Western states are increasingly prioritizing military spending, national security, and war preparation

Presentation long abstract

The article analyzes a sharp shift in Western geopolitical strategy over the past years. Traditionally, the United States, the European Union, and other Western actors championed a corporate-led transition to renewable energy and sustainability. However, this orientation has drastically changed due to global crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

The West has abandoned its earlier leadership in climate policy as technological and economic competition with emerging Asian powers—especially China—intensifies. Instead, Western states are increasingly prioritizing military spending, national security, and war preparation as means to sustain economic power. This shift is described as moving from a Green Deal to a War Deal, where military Keynesianism becomes a core response to economic stagnation and geopolitical decline.

The article suggests that this strategy both deepens socio-ecological crises and reinforces a system where war becomes an instrument of economic and geopolitical policy. He proposes that a different model—one of social justice, ecological sustainability, and international solidarity—is necessary to confront global inequality and environmental limits.

Presentation short abstract

This study examines Hungary’s role in the global EV battery supply chain, showing how EU green policies externalise social and ecological costs and reinforce authoritarian tendencies. Through action research, we explore how local and transnational movements can resist and build alternatives.

Presentation long abstract

Critical studies show that the EU’s green policies often prioritise short-term, capital-driven transitions over ecological sustainability, labour and public participation (Wigger, 2024; Vezzoni, 2023). At its core, the European Green Deal facilitates the externalisation of ecological and social costs onto peripheral countries outside the EU (Vela et al., 2023) and semi-peripheral economies within its borders (Wigger, 2022). This dynamic is particularly visible in Hungary’s electric vehicle (EV) sector, which faces growing regional and class disparities (Szabó et al., 2024) and increasing labour fragmentation (Czirfusz, 2025). Our research examines Hungary’s role in the global EV battery supply chain, showing how the centralised regime operates as a ‘bridge model’ within Europe’s industrial reconfiguration. In context of structural dependency, the regime facilitates the relocation of German car industry, attracts East Asian investments, and secures supply of Russian fossil fuels, while technological development remains concentrated in core economies of capital accumulation. Domestic capital benefits primarily through compromised procurement procedures, while foreign investors capture profits, and the Hungarian state undermines labour rights, weakens environmental protections, and suppresses resistance (Gagyi et al., 2024). Through action research, we aim to strengthen local labour and civil environmental movements, identifying avenues for collaboration. Using participatory methods, we engage civil society organisations, trade unions, labour advocates, and researchers, while establishing networks of resistance across regional and global supply chains. Our work highlights connections between local injustices and reindustrialisation, revealing how investments create green sacrifice zones, reshape labour and ecological regimes, while mapping transnational alliances challenging the prevailing green growth agenda.

Presentation short abstract

This research takes a wind farm environmental conflict in Hunan, China as case to show how and why spiritual motivations and historical environmental practices matter in environmental conflict struggle and a more just energy transition.

Presentation long abstract

Environmental conflicts in energy transitions have been explained through the lens of unequal power relations, unfair distributions of costs and benefits, livelihood threats, and institutional failures. Cultural dimensions have also been incorporated into political ecology, as illustrated by Joan Martinez-Alier’s framework of “languages of valuation,” which highlights how clashes between incommensurable values. However, based on a wind-farm conflict in Hunan, China, this research shows that spiritual motivations and historically embedded ethical commitments are critical drivers that sustain environmental defenders’ protracted, rather than episodic, resistance, and in pushing various actors to continuously address the socio-environmental impacts of wind farm development. Integrating Max Weber’s historical-sociological insights on spirit and ethics into the analysis, this research attaches attention to “who with who” and “why they must act and continue acting”, complements to political ecology’s explanations of the persistence and mobilizing mechanisms of environmental conflicts. In doing so, it expands political ecology’s cultural and historical orientations and provides a fuller account of why environmental justice struggles emerge, endure, and matter for energy transitions.

Presentation short abstract

We examine the representation of green hydrogen in print media and public policies across three different energy geographies: Argentina, Denmark, and Spain. Our analysis reveals that these processes are performative and serve to consolidate existing socio-economic orders.

Presentation long abstract

Green hydrogen and its derivatives have become centrepieces to the transition away from fossil-based economies. This article examines the public policies and representations in print media of green hydrogen across three different energy geographies: Argentina, Denmark and Spain.

It is within this contextual diversity that this article employs a relational comparison of the framings of green hydrogen, asking how green hydrogen come to be stabilized as a solution, and what kind of problem it is a solution to.

We aim to understand the ways in which the prefiguration of hydrogen futures shapes both the present and the future. The article is based on a systematic content analysis of the national hydrogen policies in the three countries and a framing analysis of the representations of green hydrogen. We have conducted a data scraping of public representations of green hydrogen in newspapers in each country between May 2023 and May 2024 followed by a detailed analysis of the content of these. This allows us to trace the ways in which green hydrogen as a technology enrolls a host of different actors at local level, both feeding on and reshaping existing discourses on local development, sovereignty and interconnectedness. The relational comparison of the ways that the energy futures are stabilized and naturalized around the industrial complex of green hydrogen reveals how these are indeed performative, discursively producing the problems that they are intended to solve while consolidating existing socio-economic orders.

Presentation short abstract

The presentation will discuss solar parks in Brazil, which through simplified licensing and limited consultation marginalize local communities, driving deforestation and threatening sociobiodiversity. Dominant market narratives perpetuate colonial power and extractive development.

Presentation long abstract

The energy transition has fueled rapid growth in renewable energy projects around the world, and the number of solar farm initiatives has increased as part of national and local strategies for decarbonization, often promoted as drivers of sustainable development and progress. In the state of Minas Gerais, in Brazil, these projects are implemented through simplified licensing and limited consultation, frequently disconnecting decision‑making from affected communities and enabling deforestation that threatens local sociobiodiversity chains. The implementation of these projects raises critical justice concerns, as dominant governance frameworks and corporate practices, which include institutional capture of local governments and public funding from the Brazilian development bank, risk perpetuating colonial power structures and undermining the self-determination of agrarian reform beneficiaries and traditional communities. This study draws on environmental justice, just transition, and decolonial political ecology frameworks to examine how solar park development in Minas Gerais engages or marginalizes local knowledge, participation, and rights. Employing document analysis, satellite imagery, and semi-structured interviews, the study reveals how dominant sustainability narratives, embedded in market-friendly governance frameworks and discourses of progress, obscure local worldviews and perpetuate colonial and extractive models of rural development. The findings highlight that a just rural energy transition requires not only technical and regulatory innovation but also a reconfiguration of power relations and epistemologies to uphold human rights and promote inclusive governance. This study contributes to critical debates on renewable energy governance in the Global South, providing insights on incorporating plural knowledge systems and fostering self-determination in renewable infrastructure development.

Presentation short abstract

Preliminary results and reflections on a study of a planned green ammonia project in Campeche, Mexico, that examines how activities anticipating the green hydrogen initiative reshape local socio-spatial relations before construction begins, traced through Actor–Network Theory and fieldwork.

Presentation long abstract

As the global green hydrogen economy expands, new production sites are being planned and implemented in peripheral regions of Mexico to tap its vast renewable energy generation and export-oriented Power-to-X (PtX) potentials. Even before construction of the required infrastructures for desalination, energy generation, transmission, conversion, and terrestrial and maritime transport begins, socio-spatial relations in and around these sites are being reshaped through early practices of facilitation, obstruction, and adaptation. This study examines the “Marengo I” project in Campeche - a green ammonia production projected by a German–Mexican consortium - to explore how emerging trans-scalar actor relations related to the GH2 economy shape new forms of socio-spatial relations even before material interventions occur. The study applies Actor–Network Theory (ANT) to map of human and non-human actors involved in and affected by the project. Activities and relations among these actors are traced through extensive desk research, semi-structured interviews, and ethnographic fieldwork conducted during field research in January 2026. In doing so, the study contributes to a growing body of scholarship in political ecology and political geography concerned with just and sustainable hydrogen transitions. At the conference, preliminary results on how transnational green hydrogen projects already reshape local spaces, along with methodological reflections, will be presented.

Presentation short abstract

Northern Greece’s shift from coal to renewables relies on cheapened land, precarious labour and financialised care. Tracing how these valuation regimes intersect is key to understanding when resistance emerges—and why it often remains weak or structurally constrained.

Presentation long abstract

This paper approaches energy restructuring in contemporary Greece through a state–finance nexus that reshapes how land, labour and care are valued and mobilised in so-called green transitions. Drawing on ten years of ethnographic research in Northern Greece’s lignite-mining region, I analyse how the area is being reconfigured as a new frontier of environmental fix where various regimes of valuation converge: land formerly organised around state-led extractive industries becomes reimagined as a speculative asset for supranational renewable infrastructures; labour in green infrustucture, framed through narratives of innovation and green upskilling, is increasingly marked by precarity and disorganisation, particularly among displaced miners and racialised newcomers; and care— sustained until the financial crisis through intergenerational credit arrangements within working-class families—has been increasingly channelled through green loans and family energy cooperatives, reconfiguring relations of dependency between households, banks and the state.

Situating the Greek case within broader dynamics of global accumulation—post-crisis austerity, the production of Greece as a European periphery, and efforts to reposition the country as a renewable-energy exporter—I argue that energy transitions function as multi-sited projects of value transformation. They reveal a field of extraction that extends beyond the technical realm of energy into territorial governance, social reproduction, and financial speculation. Mapping these interconnections is essential for understanding both the conditions that enable resistance and the structural forces that suppress or constrain it.