Renewable Societies

Alevgul H. Sorman is Ikerbasque Research Associate at the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3), University of the Basque Country, Spain.Casey Williams is a Lecturer in Environmental Studies at Rice University, USA.Imre Szeman is Director of the Institute for Environment, Conservation and Sustainability and Professor of Human Geography at the University of Toronto Scarborough, Canada.Nikki Luke is Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Tennessee, USA.

This is an excellent overview, from an international perspective, of the challenges and potentials of renewable energy transitions. The highly informative essays, as well as the introductory essay, make clear that there is no one transition, but a number of them, in different countries, among different classes and populations. Modes of energy production and consumption can coexist, enter into conflict, pose false promises, and/or make possible genuine social progress. One single transformation cannot be presupposed, nor is there any automatic connection between social justice and the simple implementation of renewables. And yet all authors agree that without genuine progress in the movement toward renewable societies progress toward social justice is impossible.

• 1. Renewable Societies: Actually Existing Transitions and Life after Fossil Fuels, Casey A. Williams (Rice University, USA), Nikki Luke (University of Tennessee, USA), Alevgül H. Sorman (University of the Basque Country, Spain), Imre Szeman (University of Toronto Scarborough, Canada) 2. Actually Existing Renewabilities within—and beyond—the Energy Transition, Mark (Goodale University of Lausanne, Switzerland) 3. Financing a Post Fossil Fuel Society and the Technoeconomics of Transition, Sean Field (University of St Andrews, UK) 4. Generating Earth Futures, K. Ben Loescher (Independent Scholar, USA) and Albert Narath (Independent Writer, USA) 5. Rural Development or Rural Extractivism? Encountering Solar PV Agriculture in Rural China, Zhanping Hu (North China Electric Power University, China) 6. What Must be Renewed? What Must be Resisted? Reflections on a Contested Energy Transition in Tunisia, Katie Sandwell (Transnational Institute, the Netherlands) and Saber Ammar (Transnational Institute, the Netherlands) 7. Energy Justice and Decolonization in Palestine: An Interview with Muna Dajani, Muna Dajani (London School of Economics, UK) Nikki Luke (University of Tennessee, USA), and Casey A. Williams (Rice University, USA) 8. Seabed Speculations, Marc Calabretta (University of Toronto, Canada), Kate J. Neville (University of Toronto, Canada), Justin Alger (University of Melbourne, Australia) and Jessica Green (Independent Scholar) 9. Demystifying the Vertical Fix, Andreas Roos (University of Gothenburg, Sweden) and Ethemcan Turhan (University of Groningen, the Netherlands) 10. Mining the Energy Transition, Mariana Walter (Barcelona Institute of International Studies, Spain) 11. Democracy Permitted?, Kai Bosworth (Independent Scholar) 12. Laboring for Energy, Deepti Chatti (University of California San Diego, USA) 13. Combustion Beyond Reason, Myles Lennon (Brown University, USA) 14. And Everything Stays the Same, Kesha Fevrier (Queen’s University, Canada) 15. From Wasting Relations to No Remainders, Rhys Williams (University of Glasgow, UK) 16. Afterword, Ashley Dawson Index