Energy justice and utility scale wind power in the isthmus: context, resistance and identity

Abstract

This research critically engages with and contributes to energy justice (EJ) scholarship and wider academic work on the Global-South’s transition towards low-carbon energy systems. Specifically, it focuses on the ability of EJ concepts and frameworks to understand embedded (in)justices in utility-scale wind power (USWP). The dynamics of low-carbon energy transitions have received significant attention in recent years; however, studies from global-south contexts have been insufficiently represented within the broader academic literature. This research contributes filling part of this gap, presenting insights into the EJ implications of low-carbon transitions in the Global-South through empirical research based on the case study of USWP development in the indigenous region of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Oaxaca, Mexico.

The research uses an interdisciplinary approach, building on insights from geography and social sciences to understand how (in)justices are constructed and articulated from the ground up by different voices and actors at the national, regional and local level.

Energy justice is a thriving scholarship which acknowledges the socio-technical nature of energy systems, primarily looking to identify, understand and address their embedded or potential injustices.

Therefore, EJ scholars advocate for energy systems design and governance, which recognizes and effectively includes a wide diversity of actors through due process to fairly distribute energy systems ills and benefits across society. EJ’s non-activist past and energy-oriented focus has been key to developing a refined, popularized, and diverse conceptual foundation, yet these conceptual foundations have also been criticized. Insufficient attention has been given to its western academic foundations, leading to universalist assumptions and top-down approaches which can inadvertently marginalize bottom-up voices and contextual constructions of justice from the Global-South. Within this context, the claims of justice around USWP discussed in this thesis addresses important questions about the conceptual core of EJ thinking.

As its main contributions to the existing academic debate, my thesis critically engages with, corroborates and extends the conceptual foundations of EJ. I use empirical evidence to critically engage with (1) the energy life-cycle framework, (2) resistance and restorative justice and (3) the applied principles framework and concepts (or tenets) of intersectionality. By doing so, I also problematize some assumptions around the fairness or justice behind renewable energy technologies (RETs), like USWP. Indeed, my research illustrates how a lack of attention to the local contexts where renewable energy transitions materialize can result in using legitimate claims for global climate change to burden already vulnerable groups with further injustices, hampering renewable transitions with sustained local resistance in the long-term. Methodologically, these contributions stem from a novel, mixed-methods approach centred on ethnography and Concept Mapping (CM), which was undertaken between October 2017 and September 2019.

Following an extensive literature, methods and background discussion, I first focus on the regional level to demonstrate the usefulness of the energy life-cycle framework (ELCF) as a general technical layout through which injustices can be assessed, necessarily bound to a whole systems perspective that acknowledges pre-existent social, environmental, economic and cultural contexts. Second, I focus on the national level to problematize the institutional/top-bottom approach for restorative justice. I do so by illustrating how bottom-up resistance from regional peasant and indigenous groups against USWP generated restorative legal mechanisms and informal pathways to increase restorative justice. In my third and last empirical chapter, I draw from my mix-methods approach to illustrate how intersectionality allows an understanding of how overlapping identities inform EJ constructs and socio-economic, environmental and political concerns of “pro” and “anti” USWP in the indigenous community of Union Hidalgo.

Through both these contributions and the avenues they open, my research comprises a call to further develop EJ guidelines in Global-South low-carbon energy transitions, which represents an unprecedented opportunity to redress many of the injustices previously embedded in traditional energy systems.