Presentation short abstract

The study analyses how green sacrifice zones are created and legitimised in Spain. It addresses the issue of which ecological-distributive dynamics and valuation languages explain the growing local opposition to renewable energies, analysing the case of Galicia.

Presentation long abstract

Currently, there is a growing number of social movements in various countries opposing the installation of renewable energy infrastructure promoted under so-called ‘green’ policies. The increase in these conflicts shows that such policies, geared towards the so-called Just Ecological Transition or Energy Transition, in many cases reproduce what the literature has described as energy colonialism. This concept refers to the persistence of capitalist logic of resource extraction and appropriation, inherited from the fossil fuel energy model, and the prevalence of monetary valuation criteria for environmental assets (Pusceddu, 2020; Sánchez & Matarán, 2023).

This work adopts the approaches of Political Ecology and Ecological Economics to analyse local opposition to renewable energy projects, understood in these currents as ecological-distributive conflicts. It also examines the emergence of new ‘green sacrifice zones’, i.e. territories that bear the environmental and social burden of these facilities while supplying electricity to large urban areas (Martínez-Alier, 2008; Keucheyan, 2016).

This paper addresses the problem of how green sacrifice zones are generated and legitimised in the context of Spain's energy transition, which is an aspect that has been little studied in countries of the Global North. Our research asks what ecological-distributive dynamics explain these configurations and what languages of valuation emerge in local conflicts.

I explore the case of Galicia, in NW Spain. I identify potential sacrifice zones through the analysis of data from the energy sector, as well as the different languages of valuation through conflict analysis.