Presentation short abstract

This paper examines dismantling processes of fossil infrastructures through the case of a coal-fired power plant and the disputes over its enduring materialities. It shows that these material legacies may deepen territorial inequalities yet also become grounds for contestation and experimentation.

Presentation long abstract

As Western societies increasingly commit to green energy futures, the viability of fossil infrastructures is called into question, posing numerous challenges in their dismantling and possible repurposing, as well as in the management of their material remnants and enduring toxic legacies. Indeed, energy transitions are not merely about substituting resources—such as renewables for fossil fuels—but require confronting the persistent and context-specific materiality of former fossil infrastructures. This paper addresses these challenges through the empirical case study of a coal-fired power plant in a historically carbon-intensive region of the Catalan Pyrenees. Once emblematic of “national modernization”, the now-abandoned plant stands at the intersection of ruination, environmental urgency, and speculative promises attached to alternative energy projects. By tracing the environmental disputes surrounding its existence and afterlives, the paper approaches infrastructural dismantling as a profoundly political process that exposes scientific-technical fissures and social inequalities, while also opening space for the resignification of these “future-takings” into possibilities for alternative “future-makings”. Drawing on recent scholarship, the paper illustrates how late-industrial environments may be marked by exhaustion, but they are hardly inert. Infrastructural ruination can stir collective agency, mobilizing people to dispute and reinterpret industrial material legacies. The paper thus shows that dismantling processes can become sites of creative retrofitting where the fraying fantasies of industrial order unravel and possibilities emerge for experiments in living otherwise.