Presentation short abstract

Focusing on Jordan's ambitious state-led decarbonization efforts, this paper advances a two-way view of decarbonizing states as both mediators of global financialization pathways and as mediated by new topographies of distributed power that materialize through energy transition.

Presentation long abstract

As the specter of climate change threatens ecosystems and livelihoods around the world, private investment in renewable power generation has surged as a leading strategy for global climate change mitigation. In West Asia, decarbonization finance grafts onto existing sociospatial structures rooted in hydrocarbon economies, generating both subtle and profound shifts in resource flows and relations between states and subjects. Drawing from ethnographic engagement in Jordan tracing the design, construction, and reconfiguration of ambitious state-led decarbonization efforts, this paper advances a two-way view of decarbonizing states as both mediators of global financialization pathways and as mediated by new topographies of distributed power that materialize through energy transition. I trace these dynamic mediations through the state architectures of energy transition to highlight key tensions between the evolving expectations of a changing population and the shifting demands of project bankability. Advancing a relational view of decarbonization finance, this work contributes to critical scholarship on the places and practices that ground processes of assetization. By focusing in on the liminality of decarbonization as a continuous process of becoming, I highlight unfolding contradictions in the making and unmaking of state authority amidst rapidly shifting imperial and geopolitical constellations of power.