Peter Newell, Power Shift: The Global Political Economy of Energy Transitions, Cambridge University Press, 2021; hbk £69.99, pbk £34:99.
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Peter Newell argues that the necessary transition from a high-carbon fossil fuel-intensive system to a low- and ideally zero-carbon one requires the assembling of forces in its support and the disassembling of ‘incumbent power organised around the fossil fuel complex’ (xi). A glimpse of what ‘incumbent power’ means in practice is offered in the 2003 Pentagon report that proposed that some states ‘might seek to develop more effective border control strategies to ensure that large populations displaced by manifestations of climate change (whether rising sea levels or extreme weather events) could be kept on the other side of the national border’ such that ‘people displaced by environmental disasters or environmental stress may be positioned as threats to the security of the state rather than as those in need of being secured’ (McDonald 2013, 46, cited p. 4; cf. Khanna 2021). More recently, in spite of the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit the rise in mean global temperature to 1.5-2 per cent, the forward plans of states and corporations still project increases in production that would make this impossible (62-3). UNEP’s 2021 Production Gap Report, published on 20 October in the run-up to the Glasgow COP26 Summit, shows that this is still the case, and the leak of responses to IPCC proposals reported by the BBC a day later shows governments around the world opposing key measures and dragging their feet over change (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58982445). This timely book is an excellent advanced introduction to the issues involved.
Newell starts from the position that runaway climate change threatens the very habitability of the earth (1), and draws on Gramsci’s notion of trasformismo to characterise global elites as seeking to ‘ensure that politics and policy reinforce a market liberal approach to transitions within capitalism as opposed to more sweeping transformations of it’ (8). Climate change ‘draws attention to, highlights and amplifies a series of tensions and contradictions that inhere in the project of industrialism’ (9), to which the global politics of uneven exchange and patterns of exploitation between core and periphery are central. But: ‘Rather than addressing contemporary and historical inequities, the preference on the part of transnational elites has been to employ spatial and temporal fixes to displace solutions onto poorer regions of the world and into the future in order to outsource the painful politics of disruption and avoid threats to near-term capital accumulation’. States and corporations ‘deflect, delegitimise and downplay calls for reduced consumption and production and more sustainable and inclusive models of economic development, and for redistribution, by focusing on the need for more: for more technology and finance, more markets and better pricing systems, enforceable property rights and enabling conditions for a new round of accumulation’ (11). Newell argues not only that this approach will inevitably compound the social injustice inherent in the present system, leading to uncontainable tensions, but also that it will fail on its own terms: only a much more fundamental transformation will meet the challenge of rampant global warming. In short, the book ‘highlights contradictions at the heart of capitalism, which compromises (sic) its ability to engage effectively in the sorts of energy transitions now required and the forms of politics to which it gives rise’ (13).
All this, centred on a critique of the politics of productivity and growth, is, you may say, well-trodden ground. So it is, and so much the better. The value of the analysis lies precisely in that it starts from widely agreed premises and theoretical perspectives familiar to students of global or international political economy and development studies in particular, and goes on from there to situate the issues of energy and climate change within them, and explore systematically their historical, political, global and ecological dynamics – ‘no easy task’, Newell comments, but ‘nevertheless an important one’ (12). As noted above, the book is grounded on acceptance of the need for transformative change, and scepticism that it is possible or desirable within the current global capitalist system. Within these critical parameters it is concise, judicious and even-handed, running to a user-friendly 240 pages of text, with an impressive range of reference reflected in an extensive and very useful bibliography. It is wide-ranging, systematic, and inter-disciplinary in its approach, clearly organised, and centrally focused on the power politics of power. It captures the ways in which the current global energy regime creates inequality and skews opportunity, and delineates the obstacles that heavy reliance on capitalist markets places in the way of any transition at all, let alone one that could be described as socially just. As such, it is particularly suited for prominent inclusion on courses in the fields of international or global politics, political economy and sociology, geography, and development studies, whether at undergraduate or postgraduate level.
Newell identifies three aspects which constitute the ‘energy trilemma’: the threat of climate change, and the issues of energy security and energy poverty. He argues that shifts are required across a very broad front, in institutions, finance, infrastructure, and technology, along with broader social and cultural change, and singles out four key dimensions for close attention: historical, political, global, and ecological. Successive chapters then focus on theorising, producing, financing, governing, and mobilising energy transitions. This involves some repetition, but only of a helpful kind that highlights connections and reinforces key arguments.
Chapter Two, on theorising energy transitions, gives a balanced account of the ‘multi-level perspective’ on sociotechnical transitions associated with Frank Geels, recognising the insights it affords but registering the limitations arising from its Eurocentric focus (28-31). It then notes the tendency for methodological nationalism to prevail in sociotechnical studies more generally, along with a foregrounding of technology that overshadows consideration of political economy, and a frequent failure ‘to engage with the deeper political enabling environments that have nurtured disruptive change historically and whether relevant insights can be gleaned for today’s world’ (33). Literatures on varieties of capitalism and historical institutionalism are briefly invoked, at which point Newell concludes that
‘we continue to lack analysis of the deeper politics of transition in terms of the distributions of power and the re-casting of state–market relations required to bring about transformations in energy production and consumption, informed by historical analysis of the conditions in which these have been achieved before and foregrounding questions of (political) ecology relative to the (often assumed) sustainability of different transition pathways. Placing global articulations of power and political economy, history and ecology at the forefront of analysis … both challenges and goes beyond the useful but narrower focus upon sociotechnical transitions and their governance in the existing literature … by foregrounding the relations of global power that shape particular institutional configurations and sociotechnical possibilities’ (34-5).
Successive sections on ‘globalising the political economies of energy transition’ (39-42), ‘the international relations of energy’ (42-49), ‘historicising the political economy of energy transitions’ (49-59), and ‘ecologising the political economy of energy transitions’ (59-61) set out the analytical framework. The first is grounded on Gramsci and Robert Cox, brings in Di Muzio (2015) and Malm (2016), along with Newell’s own work with Paterson (2010) on ‘climate capitalism’ as a finance-led regime of accumulation, and centres on the potential contribution of critical GPE (global political economy), in particular in relation to the ‘global interrelationships between national-level transitions and to an appreciation of the shifting role of the state in a context of globalisation’ (39). The second covers realist, liberal institutional, Marxist and critical IPE approaches before imagining briefly how Smith, Ricardo, Marx, Mill and Polanyi might have approached the issue. The third locates historical and contemporary energy transitions as products of particular configurations of social and class forces of production, asking: ‘What, if any, historical precedents are there for the rapid and disruptive change to existing ways of organising the economy, technology, finance, politics and society in ways which brought about positive change that might be useful for analysis and praxis at this historical conjuncture? This leads to a thought-provoking discussion framed by the hard facts that ‘energy system transitions, in particular, are rare events whose complex and long-drawn-out processes are often decades in the making and can take centuries to fully unfold’ (51, citing Fouquet and Pearson, 2012, 1; cf. Perez 2002, Smil 2016), and that there is no relevant historical precedent for a conscious transition in response to environmental imperatives. One can argue that things are different now (Bromley 2016): Newell gives examples of rapid transitions (some problematic) such as Cuba’s forced transition away from oil after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Brazil’s adoption of flex-fuel vehicles, France’s switch to nuclear energy, and the Dutch switch to natural gas (Sovacool 2016), but notes the ever-present danger that governments will use the rhetoric of urgency to push regressive interventions through. This section is particularly full of good sense and striking evidence from secondary sources, and throws up numerous talking points that will promote discussion in the classroom, and create opportunities for further individual work outside it. The briefer final section on political ecology identifies sustainability as its primary concern, highlighting its frontal critique of industrialism as well as capitalism, and its critical view of the state and of market-led transitions. The chapter concludes with a restatement of the principal themes addressed:
‘The focus throughout the book is on power and politics as manifest in contests over producing transitions between labour, the state and different types of (fossil and other) capital; financing disruption and creative destruction; governing transitions involving the state and non-state as well as transnational actors and global governance institutions; and finally, but critically, mobilising and culturing transitions through resistance to energy extractivism and energy injustice and through building alternative pathways’ (61).
These opening chapters, accounting for a quarter of the main text, provide a solid basis for the rest, and those that follow display authority, good judgement, and a consistent capacity to incorporate the insights of a range of relevant critical literatures into a coherent synthesis. In short, this is an excellent foundational text for the critical political economy of fossil fuels. This being so, I pick out selectively some main lines of argument in what follows, and offer a brief concluding comment.
First, following Malm (2016), the industrial revolution was not only a technical shift based on steam power, but rather ‘was about the superior control of labour that it afforded, allowing capital to concentrate production at the most profitable sites and during the most convenient hours’ (68); the current wave of restructuring of global labour markets enabled by technological advances in highly energy intensive and privately controlled global computer networks has the same character, and has the same effect of lending credence to claims that solutions are to be found through markets, competition and private initiative. Second, it is not just ‘old industries’ that are the problem: ‘the resource use of post war hydro-carbon, automotive and real estate capitalism is more obvious, but by no means more intense than the energy hungry contemporary digital and financial capitalism’ (73, cited from Hoffman 2018, p. 42). This insistence on the immense technological, social, political and ideological embeddedness of dependence upon fossil fuels is sobering, and essential to any consideration of alternative ways forward. Third, the politics of reform are complex. The energy business sector has shifted its position since the 1990s, but by no means enough, and the initiatives put forward by states and international organisations (like the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme) fall similarly short; but the sector is not monolithic, nor are those industries that rely heavily on fossil fuel energy. At the same time, concerns over job losses have meant that the labour movement has not united around an agenda for the elimination of reliance on fossil fuels. Fourth, in developed and developing states alike, neoliberal policies promoting privatisation and access for (foreign) capital, in conjunction with specific and general treaties that protect investment, such as the 1991 European Energy Charter and the 1994 Energy Charter Treaty, bilateral investment treaties, and the binding international dispute settlement regime create and protect interests committed to the continued exploitation of fossil fuels; and the ‘ecologically uneven exchange’ involved in exporting polluting industries to the developing world compounds the damage done. Fifth, finance ‘can work to uphold and sustain the fossil fuel complex and incumbent actors or to accelerate their demise by switching investments into lower carbon forms of energy’ (104). It could in principle play a powerful role in enabling and accelerating the transition to a lower carbon economy, and strong trends in disinvestment in fossil fuels among financial institutions point towards a significant shift, in part as shareholders pressure fossil fuel producers to diversify against future risk. But state subsidies to fossil fuel production and use are huge, and bring significant political benefits through the clientelistic practices they enable, while international organisations are heavy funders: ‘The World Bank Group, the European Investment Bank and the Asian Development Bank were the largest financiers of fossil fuels in 2016’ (121). Sixth, then, energy transitions are ‘part of broader attempts to deepen and extend neoliberal discipline and market society: opening up new investment opportunities for capital through access to investments in energy infrastructures’ (138). Seventh, energy policy is responsive not only to the energy sector itself, but also to allied infrastructures and industries: Newell stresses the importance of ‘non-energy energy policy’ or ‘trade, transport, housing and agriculture policies which generate energy demands and reproduce energy regimes through their preference for particular policies, pricing regimes and infrastructures’ (147). Eighth, governance of the energy sector has generally been governance for energy investors and the energy industry, rather than of those actors, and ‘overall global energy governance remains weak, fragmented and incoherent from the point of view of delivering low carbon transitions’ (162), while the emerging energy order is ‘increasingly multi-polar and more fragmented, but not necessarily more inclusive or sustainable’ (166). Ninth, though, there is space for contestation: ‘Living, working and sharing to form communities of practice, to cultivate and enact (post-materialist) values of cooperation, solidarity, non-monetarised exchange, compassion and non-capitalist relations, which in reality constitute the majority of social interactions even in a deeply marketised society, is transition’ (172).
This last point comes early in the chapter on mobilisation, which explores ‘the role of social mobilisation and cultural shifts in creating ruptures and destabilising effects, in generating demands for alternative energy systems, as well as actually doing the work of transition and building the basis of wider transformative change by constructing alternative pathways: differently organised, produced and financed, making use of alternative technologies and often developed through more open, participatory and inclusive processes’. It advances the argument that ‘some social movements are seeding, culturing and practising transformations in the present’ (171). Whether by pushing local councils to declare ‘climate emergencies’, blocking production or resisting attempts to open new sites, exposing the activities of the energy giants and refuting the misinformation they purvey, pressing banks, councils, pension schemes and universities to disinvest in fossil fuels, campaigning for recipients of sponsorship or advertising revenue from energy interests to renounce it, or taking advantage of schemes of participatory governance such as climate assemblies, incremental shifts can be brought about in the balance of power. Having been active in many of these areas, Newell is realistic about their limits, and aware of the danger that ‘participatory approaches may be ‘used as a means of deflecting protest, inhibiting actions or “rubber-stamping” a predetermined decision’ (185).
From this point Newell goes on to consider direct action (for and against schemes to reduce dependence on fossil fuels) and locally owned renewable energy projects, then changes direction slightly to discuss efforts to promote individual behavioural and value change, noting wryly in relation to shaming strategies that ‘whilst they make those doing the shaming feel better about their own conduct, they do not induce positive behaviour change in the targets of the shaming. Hence, it becomes a form of virtue signalling rather than generating positive social change’ (205); he is largely sceptical, because the targeting of individual consumer behaviour and values is a distracting neoliberal tactic that diverts attention from the strategies and actions of producers and governments, and even fails on its own terms because it confines itself to low-hanging fruit and ‘tends to encourage the mistaken and problematic view that minor incremental tweaks in lifestyle are sufficient by way of a social response’ (208). The tone of the chapter is best set by the focus on ‘pathways to change which combine top-down and bottom-up, state, market and civil society-led transformations’ (209), and the suggestions that: ‘The interconnected, mutually dependent, contingent nature of mobilisation strategies is what seems to make them effective. Despite the binaries of inside/outside, reformist/revolutionary or reform/transformation that run through so much academic analysis, strategies often build upon and depend on one another, amplifying effects’ (213), and that: ‘Thinking ecologically about mobilisation means reflecting on the interrelationship and mutually reinforcing (at times) effect of the diversity of strategies and tactics employed’ (215). This implies a strategy, for those convinced that a radical transformation is needed, of recognising the many dimensions involved, building patiently through ‘minor transitions’ when scope for contestation is limited, and being alert for tipping points, or moments of crisis, when reformist efforts inadvertently create space for more transformative change, or the level of crisis simply leaves reformist options behind.
Newell explicitly rejects the idea that ‘civil society should provide blueprints for change and singular visions of alternatives’ (219), and the conclusion, which opens with the question: ‘How do we move from narrower visions of transition to the transformation of energy systems and their politics?’ (221), declines to do so. But it sets out methodically what is needed to achieve this end: rethink how we produce energy and how much we produce; switch to a different model of financing with ‘a greater role for patient capital, different ownership structures and much stronger and more effective governance of finance for the common good at national, regional and global levels’, and divest massively from incumbent industries, projects and infrastructures (222-3); secure a proactive state and more effective global governance; institute bold and interventionist regulation, and stronger global and regional energy governance, and democratise by introducing downwards control over energy and stronger participation in deliberation around energy policy, removing the ideological and institutional lock-in it currently provides for energy investors and incumbent interests; change people’s views about the way they have a right to live; and so on. All good common sense, and Newell is of course aware that the issue here is one of hegemony, and that it is currently in the wrong hands. He addresses this in terms of the interplay between accumulation and legitimation (cf. pp. 95-6), identifying the capacity of activism to change markets by imposing costs on the production and consumption of fossil fuels, and urging a strategy of broad alliances:
‘A challenge for activists is to contest and push the boundaries of what counts as legitimate forms of wealth creation in the energy sector and beyond in a carbon-constrained world. To be effective in shifting this debate, new and broader alliances will be necessary with labour, indigenous groups, gender, health and human rights activists to amplify their voices and influence and to challenge dominant energy systems on a range of fronts’ (225).
The tone of the discussion is sombre, all the same, and understandably so in view of the way that chapter after chapter has brought home the power of incumbent (capitalist) interests and the rapid and comprehensive nature of the transition that is required. Short term action may mean ‘going with the grain of where power lies and facing up to the reality of where control of production, finance and technology is currently concentrated’, thereby allowing profit-making to feature as a primary incentive; ‘[r]apid but ill-conceived transitions, imposed from above and without social acceptance, also have their costs’; and ‘green transitions are not inherently socially just, and, in fact, are frequently less just than other transitions, such as gender or racial emancipation’ (citing Dimitris Stevis (https://medium.com/just-transitions/stevis-e147a9ec189a); nor is decarbonisation, if the costs are pushed onto those least responsible, and least able to bear them; yet as catastrophe looms ever closer, ‘[r]ejecting all state-led and market pathways to change also comes at a price’; and delaying action ‘also has a justice implication’ (230-33). Newell’s conclusion, that muddling through, engaging in the messy politics of negotiation and compromise and learning by doing are ‘the incremental, inevitable and necessary day-to-day politics of transition’ (234), so that transitions in turn ‘may well be incremental, cumulative, messy and multidirectional for the most part’ (237-8) does not preclude either efforts to tilt towards social justice at all times, or the simultaneous pursuit of more radical forms of direct action, but still it will not please everyone. It leads him to reassert, in conclusion, that it is imperative that business should not dictate the terms of transition, which should be about ‘a different type of state and a different type of market and the move from an extractive to a regenerative economy’, while warning that ‘if the purposes of energy policy and assumptions about whose energy needs take priority and who pays the social and environmental price of conventional energy pathways are not up for discussion and contestation, the prospects of a meaningful just transition, let alone broader transformations, appear remote indeed’ (239-40).
What is the prospect, then, for the disassembling of incumbent power organised around the fossil fuel complex? We are certainly in for a rapid transition, but pretty much everything points at the moment to a transition largely on capital's terms. Early on, Newell cites Kolya Abramsky (2010):
[Marx] would share Abramsky’s view that ‘[a] discussion of energy cannot be separated from a discussion of capitalism, crisis and class struggle’ (2010: 11). He might be more interested in debates about energy democracy and struggles to spark a ‘worldwide energy revolution’ to re-common energy. He would echo Abramsky’s (2010: 10) claim that ‘[a] class analysis of energy helps to situate the contemporary evolution of the energy sector in general, and the expanding renewable energy sector in particular, within systemic dynamics’. And he would be sympathetic to the claim that ‘the transition process to a new energy system is, in effect, the next round of global class struggle over control of the means of production and subsistence’ (2010: 10)'.
And at the very end, he invokes Abramsky's nightmare scenario of a transition that strengthens capital and incumbent holders of power:
'Energy generation and distribution plays a key role in shaping human relations. Every form of energy implies a particular organisation of work and division of labor (both in general and in the energy sector in particular). The most significant social, economic, cultural, political and technological transformations in history were associated with shifts in energy generation: from hunting and gathering to agriculture, from human and animal power for transport and production to wind and the steam engine, from coal and oil and nuclear fission as drivers of industry and war. All these transformations have led to increased concentration of power and wealth. And a very real possibility exists that the coming transformation in the world’s energy system will result in similar shifts in power relations' (2010: 8).
George Bush (Sr) was adamant, thirty years ago, that no measures that threatened the American way of life could be contemplated; Connie Hedegaard (the EU's Climate Commissioner in 2011), insisted that European climate policies needed to work ‘in a way that will not hamper economic growth in Europe but which leaves companies maximum flexibility to cut emissions at least cost’ (cited, p. 122); the leaders of China and India ask why the costs should be borne by the poor in the developing world; and the leaked responses to the current IPCC proposals show similar attitudes are rife across the world. But capital has no means for caring about the American way of life, the European growth rate, the degree of poverty in India, China, or anywhere else, or the particular concerns of the governments of Australia, Japan, or Saudi Arabia (among others cited in the BBC report). Its goal is self-accumulation; its immanent laws dictate that such accumulation will be conflictive and subject inevitably to recurrent crisis; and a point has now been reached at which those laws have the future development of humanity at their mercy. I don't accept that so long as capital remains in command, the destruction of the planet as a habitable space for human beings is inevitable. It is just as likely that technological advances, increasing intensification of competition among workers on a global scale, far sharper reductions in welfare than we have seen until now, and the forced return of whole swathes of the world's population to the Stone Age may create the conditions for the survival of a much reduced global population, inevitably far more closely policed and far more unequal than at present. I'm aware that my solution, which is to cycle off to my allotment in sunny south Manchester, pick some late raspberries and the last courgettes (a.k.a. zucchini), plant some garlic, shallots and onions for next year, then come home to look into replacing the gas boiler with an air source heat pump, is not going to make much difference. But there we are. In our different ways, we have to try anyway.
References
Abramsky, Kolya. 2010. Sparking a Worldwide Energy Revolution: Social Struggles in the Transition to a Post-Petrol World. Edinburgh: AK Press.
Bromley, Peter. 2016. ‘Extraordinary Interventions: Towards a Framework for Rapid Transition and Deep Emissions Reductions in the Energy Space’. Energy Research & Social Science 22: 165–71.
Buxton, Nick, and Ben Hayes. 2016. The Secure and the Dispossessed: How the Military and Corporations Are Shaping a Climate-Changed World. London: Pluto Press.
Di Muzio, Tim. 2015. Carbon Capitalism: Energy, Social Reproduction and World Order. London: Rowman and Littlefield.
Fouquet, Roger, and Peter Pearson. 2012. ‘Past and Prospective Energy Transitions: Insights from History’, Energy Policy 50: 1–7.
Hoffmann, Clemens. 2018. ‘Beyond the Resource Curse and Pipeline Conspiracies: Energy as a Social Relation in the Middle East’. Energy Research & Social Science 41: 39–47.
Khanna, Parag. 2021. Move: How Mass Migration Will Reshape the World – and What It Means for You, New York, Simon & Schuster.
Levi-Faur, David. 2005. ‘The Global Diffusion of Regulatory Capitalism’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 598, 1, 12-32.
McDonald, David A. 2013. ‘Discourses of Climate Security’, Political Geography 33: 43–51.
Malm, Andreas. 2016. Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming. London: Verso.
Newell, Peter, and Matthew Paterson. 2010. Climate Capitalism: Global Warming and the Transformation of the Global Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Perez, Carlota. 2002. Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Smil, Vaclav. 2016. ‘Examining Energy Transitions: A Dozen Insights Based on Performance’, Energy Research & Social Science 22: 194–7.
Sovacool, 2016. ‘How Long Will It Take? Conceptualizing the Temporal Dynamics of Energy Transitions’. Energy Research & Social Science 13: 202–15.
Newell starts from the position that runaway climate change threatens the very habitability of the earth (1), and draws on Gramsci’s notion of trasformismo to characterise global elites as seeking to ‘ensure that politics and policy reinforce a market liberal approach to transitions within capitalism as opposed to more sweeping transformations of it’ (8). Climate change ‘draws attention to, highlights and amplifies a series of tensions and contradictions that inhere in the project of industrialism’ (9), to which the global politics of uneven exchange and patterns of exploitation between core and periphery are central. But: ‘Rather than addressing contemporary and historical inequities, the preference on the part of transnational elites has been to employ spatial and temporal fixes to displace solutions onto poorer regions of the world and into the future in order to outsource the painful politics of disruption and avoid threats to near-term capital accumulation’. States and corporations ‘deflect, delegitimise and downplay calls for reduced consumption and production and more sustainable and inclusive models of economic development, and for redistribution, by focusing on the need for more: for more technology and finance, more markets and better pricing systems, enforceable property rights and enabling conditions for a new round of accumulation’ (11). Newell argues not only that this approach will inevitably compound the social injustice inherent in the present system, leading to uncontainable tensions, but also that it will fail on its own terms: only a much more fundamental transformation will meet the challenge of rampant global warming. In short, the book ‘highlights contradictions at the heart of capitalism, which compromises (sic) its ability to engage effectively in the sorts of energy transitions now required and the forms of politics to which it gives rise’ (13).
All this, centred on a critique of the politics of productivity and growth, is, you may say, well-trodden ground. So it is, and so much the better. The value of the analysis lies precisely in that it starts from widely agreed premises and theoretical perspectives familiar to students of global or international political economy and development studies in particular, and goes on from there to situate the issues of energy and climate change within them, and explore systematically their historical, political, global and ecological dynamics – ‘no easy task’, Newell comments, but ‘nevertheless an important one’ (12). As noted above, the book is grounded on acceptance of the need for transformative change, and scepticism that it is possible or desirable within the current global capitalist system. Within these critical parameters it is concise, judicious and even-handed, running to a user-friendly 240 pages of text, with an impressive range of reference reflected in an extensive and very useful bibliography. It is wide-ranging, systematic, and inter-disciplinary in its approach, clearly organised, and centrally focused on the power politics of power. It captures the ways in which the current global energy regime creates inequality and skews opportunity, and delineates the obstacles that heavy reliance on capitalist markets places in the way of any transition at all, let alone one that could be described as socially just. As such, it is particularly suited for prominent inclusion on courses in the fields of international or global politics, political economy and sociology, geography, and development studies, whether at undergraduate or postgraduate level.
Newell identifies three aspects which constitute the ‘energy trilemma’: the threat of climate change, and the issues of energy security and energy poverty. He argues that shifts are required across a very broad front, in institutions, finance, infrastructure, and technology, along with broader social and cultural change, and singles out four key dimensions for close attention: historical, political, global, and ecological. Successive chapters then focus on theorising, producing, financing, governing, and mobilising energy transitions. This involves some repetition, but only of a helpful kind that highlights connections and reinforces key arguments.
Chapter Two, on theorising energy transitions, gives a balanced account of the ‘multi-level perspective’ on sociotechnical transitions associated with Frank Geels, recognising the insights it affords but registering the limitations arising from its Eurocentric focus (28-31). It then notes the tendency for methodological nationalism to prevail in sociotechnical studies more generally, along with a foregrounding of technology that overshadows consideration of political economy, and a frequent failure ‘to engage with the deeper political enabling environments that have nurtured disruptive change historically and whether relevant insights can be gleaned for today’s world’ (33). Literatures on varieties of capitalism and historical institutionalism are briefly invoked, at which point Newell concludes that
‘we continue to lack analysis of the deeper politics of transition in terms of the distributions of power and the re-casting of state–market relations required to bring about transformations in energy production and consumption, informed by historical analysis of the conditions in which these have been achieved before and foregrounding questions of (political) ecology relative to the (often assumed) sustainability of different transition pathways. Placing global articulations of power and political economy, history and ecology at the forefront of analysis … both challenges and goes beyond the useful but narrower focus upon sociotechnical transitions and their governance in the existing literature … by foregrounding the relations of global power that shape particular institutional configurations and sociotechnical possibilities’ (34-5).
Successive sections on ‘globalising the political economies of energy transition’ (39-42), ‘the international relations of energy’ (42-49), ‘historicising the political economy of energy transitions’ (49-59), and ‘ecologising the political economy of energy transitions’ (59-61) set out the analytical framework. The first is grounded on Gramsci and Robert Cox, brings in Di Muzio (2015) and Malm (2016), along with Newell’s own work with Paterson (2010) on ‘climate capitalism’ as a finance-led regime of accumulation, and centres on the potential contribution of critical GPE (global political economy), in particular in relation to the ‘global interrelationships between national-level transitions and to an appreciation of the shifting role of the state in a context of globalisation’ (39). The second covers realist, liberal institutional, Marxist and critical IPE approaches before imagining briefly how Smith, Ricardo, Marx, Mill and Polanyi might have approached the issue. The third locates historical and contemporary energy transitions as products of particular configurations of social and class forces of production, asking: ‘What, if any, historical precedents are there for the rapid and disruptive change to existing ways of organising the economy, technology, finance, politics and society in ways which brought about positive change that might be useful for analysis and praxis at this historical conjuncture? This leads to a thought-provoking discussion framed by the hard facts that ‘energy system transitions, in particular, are rare events whose complex and long-drawn-out processes are often decades in the making and can take centuries to fully unfold’ (51, citing Fouquet and Pearson, 2012, 1; cf. Perez 2002, Smil 2016), and that there is no relevant historical precedent for a conscious transition in response to environmental imperatives. One can argue that things are different now (Bromley 2016): Newell gives examples of rapid transitions (some problematic) such as Cuba’s forced transition away from oil after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Brazil’s adoption of flex-fuel vehicles, France’s switch to nuclear energy, and the Dutch switch to natural gas (Sovacool 2016), but notes the ever-present danger that governments will use the rhetoric of urgency to push regressive interventions through. This section is particularly full of good sense and striking evidence from secondary sources, and throws up numerous talking points that will promote discussion in the classroom, and create opportunities for further individual work outside it. The briefer final section on political ecology identifies sustainability as its primary concern, highlighting its frontal critique of industrialism as well as capitalism, and its critical view of the state and of market-led transitions. The chapter concludes with a restatement of the principal themes addressed:
‘The focus throughout the book is on power and politics as manifest in contests over producing transitions between labour, the state and different types of (fossil and other) capital; financing disruption and creative destruction; governing transitions involving the state and non-state as well as transnational actors and global governance institutions; and finally, but critically, mobilising and culturing transitions through resistance to energy extractivism and energy injustice and through building alternative pathways’ (61).
These opening chapters, accounting for a quarter of the main text, provide a solid basis for the rest, and those that follow display authority, good judgement, and a consistent capacity to incorporate the insights of a range of relevant critical literatures into a coherent synthesis. In short, this is an excellent foundational text for the critical political economy of fossil fuels. This being so, I pick out selectively some main lines of argument in what follows, and offer a brief concluding comment.
First, following Malm (2016), the industrial revolution was not only a technical shift based on steam power, but rather ‘was about the superior control of labour that it afforded, allowing capital to concentrate production at the most profitable sites and during the most convenient hours’ (68); the current wave of restructuring of global labour markets enabled by technological advances in highly energy intensive and privately controlled global computer networks has the same character, and has the same effect of lending credence to claims that solutions are to be found through markets, competition and private initiative. Second, it is not just ‘old industries’ that are the problem: ‘the resource use of post war hydro-carbon, automotive and real estate capitalism is more obvious, but by no means more intense than the energy hungry contemporary digital and financial capitalism’ (73, cited from Hoffman 2018, p. 42). This insistence on the immense technological, social, political and ideological embeddedness of dependence upon fossil fuels is sobering, and essential to any consideration of alternative ways forward. Third, the politics of reform are complex. The energy business sector has shifted its position since the 1990s, but by no means enough, and the initiatives put forward by states and international organisations (like the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme) fall similarly short; but the sector is not monolithic, nor are those industries that rely heavily on fossil fuel energy. At the same time, concerns over job losses have meant that the labour movement has not united around an agenda for the elimination of reliance on fossil fuels. Fourth, in developed and developing states alike, neoliberal policies promoting privatisation and access for (foreign) capital, in conjunction with specific and general treaties that protect investment, such as the 1991 European Energy Charter and the 1994 Energy Charter Treaty, bilateral investment treaties, and the binding international dispute settlement regime create and protect interests committed to the continued exploitation of fossil fuels; and the ‘ecologically uneven exchange’ involved in exporting polluting industries to the developing world compounds the damage done. Fifth, finance ‘can work to uphold and sustain the fossil fuel complex and incumbent actors or to accelerate their demise by switching investments into lower carbon forms of energy’ (104). It could in principle play a powerful role in enabling and accelerating the transition to a lower carbon economy, and strong trends in disinvestment in fossil fuels among financial institutions point towards a significant shift, in part as shareholders pressure fossil fuel producers to diversify against future risk. But state subsidies to fossil fuel production and use are huge, and bring significant political benefits through the clientelistic practices they enable, while international organisations are heavy funders: ‘The World Bank Group, the European Investment Bank and the Asian Development Bank were the largest financiers of fossil fuels in 2016’ (121). Sixth, then, energy transitions are ‘part of broader attempts to deepen and extend neoliberal discipline and market society: opening up new investment opportunities for capital through access to investments in energy infrastructures’ (138). Seventh, energy policy is responsive not only to the energy sector itself, but also to allied infrastructures and industries: Newell stresses the importance of ‘non-energy energy policy’ or ‘trade, transport, housing and agriculture policies which generate energy demands and reproduce energy regimes through their preference for particular policies, pricing regimes and infrastructures’ (147). Eighth, governance of the energy sector has generally been governance for energy investors and the energy industry, rather than of those actors, and ‘overall global energy governance remains weak, fragmented and incoherent from the point of view of delivering low carbon transitions’ (162), while the emerging energy order is ‘increasingly multi-polar and more fragmented, but not necessarily more inclusive or sustainable’ (166). Ninth, though, there is space for contestation: ‘Living, working and sharing to form communities of practice, to cultivate and enact (post-materialist) values of cooperation, solidarity, non-monetarised exchange, compassion and non-capitalist relations, which in reality constitute the majority of social interactions even in a deeply marketised society, is transition’ (172).
This last point comes early in the chapter on mobilisation, which explores ‘the role of social mobilisation and cultural shifts in creating ruptures and destabilising effects, in generating demands for alternative energy systems, as well as actually doing the work of transition and building the basis of wider transformative change by constructing alternative pathways: differently organised, produced and financed, making use of alternative technologies and often developed through more open, participatory and inclusive processes’. It advances the argument that ‘some social movements are seeding, culturing and practising transformations in the present’ (171). Whether by pushing local councils to declare ‘climate emergencies’, blocking production or resisting attempts to open new sites, exposing the activities of the energy giants and refuting the misinformation they purvey, pressing banks, councils, pension schemes and universities to disinvest in fossil fuels, campaigning for recipients of sponsorship or advertising revenue from energy interests to renounce it, or taking advantage of schemes of participatory governance such as climate assemblies, incremental shifts can be brought about in the balance of power. Having been active in many of these areas, Newell is realistic about their limits, and aware of the danger that ‘participatory approaches may be ‘used as a means of deflecting protest, inhibiting actions or “rubber-stamping” a predetermined decision’ (185).
From this point Newell goes on to consider direct action (for and against schemes to reduce dependence on fossil fuels) and locally owned renewable energy projects, then changes direction slightly to discuss efforts to promote individual behavioural and value change, noting wryly in relation to shaming strategies that ‘whilst they make those doing the shaming feel better about their own conduct, they do not induce positive behaviour change in the targets of the shaming. Hence, it becomes a form of virtue signalling rather than generating positive social change’ (205); he is largely sceptical, because the targeting of individual consumer behaviour and values is a distracting neoliberal tactic that diverts attention from the strategies and actions of producers and governments, and even fails on its own terms because it confines itself to low-hanging fruit and ‘tends to encourage the mistaken and problematic view that minor incremental tweaks in lifestyle are sufficient by way of a social response’ (208). The tone of the chapter is best set by the focus on ‘pathways to change which combine top-down and bottom-up, state, market and civil society-led transformations’ (209), and the suggestions that: ‘The interconnected, mutually dependent, contingent nature of mobilisation strategies is what seems to make them effective. Despite the binaries of inside/outside, reformist/revolutionary or reform/transformation that run through so much academic analysis, strategies often build upon and depend on one another, amplifying effects’ (213), and that: ‘Thinking ecologically about mobilisation means reflecting on the interrelationship and mutually reinforcing (at times) effect of the diversity of strategies and tactics employed’ (215). This implies a strategy, for those convinced that a radical transformation is needed, of recognising the many dimensions involved, building patiently through ‘minor transitions’ when scope for contestation is limited, and being alert for tipping points, or moments of crisis, when reformist efforts inadvertently create space for more transformative change, or the level of crisis simply leaves reformist options behind.
Newell explicitly rejects the idea that ‘civil society should provide blueprints for change and singular visions of alternatives’ (219), and the conclusion, which opens with the question: ‘How do we move from narrower visions of transition to the transformation of energy systems and their politics?’ (221), declines to do so. But it sets out methodically what is needed to achieve this end: rethink how we produce energy and how much we produce; switch to a different model of financing with ‘a greater role for patient capital, different ownership structures and much stronger and more effective governance of finance for the common good at national, regional and global levels’, and divest massively from incumbent industries, projects and infrastructures (222-3); secure a proactive state and more effective global governance; institute bold and interventionist regulation, and stronger global and regional energy governance, and democratise by introducing downwards control over energy and stronger participation in deliberation around energy policy, removing the ideological and institutional lock-in it currently provides for energy investors and incumbent interests; change people’s views about the way they have a right to live; and so on. All good common sense, and Newell is of course aware that the issue here is one of hegemony, and that it is currently in the wrong hands. He addresses this in terms of the interplay between accumulation and legitimation (cf. pp. 95-6), identifying the capacity of activism to change markets by imposing costs on the production and consumption of fossil fuels, and urging a strategy of broad alliances:
‘A challenge for activists is to contest and push the boundaries of what counts as legitimate forms of wealth creation in the energy sector and beyond in a carbon-constrained world. To be effective in shifting this debate, new and broader alliances will be necessary with labour, indigenous groups, gender, health and human rights activists to amplify their voices and influence and to challenge dominant energy systems on a range of fronts’ (225).
The tone of the discussion is sombre, all the same, and understandably so in view of the way that chapter after chapter has brought home the power of incumbent (capitalist) interests and the rapid and comprehensive nature of the transition that is required. Short term action may mean ‘going with the grain of where power lies and facing up to the reality of where control of production, finance and technology is currently concentrated’, thereby allowing profit-making to feature as a primary incentive; ‘[r]apid but ill-conceived transitions, imposed from above and without social acceptance, also have their costs’; and ‘green transitions are not inherently socially just, and, in fact, are frequently less just than other transitions, such as gender or racial emancipation’ (citing Dimitris Stevis (https://medium.com/just-transitions/stevis-e147a9ec189a); nor is decarbonisation, if the costs are pushed onto those least responsible, and least able to bear them; yet as catastrophe looms ever closer, ‘[r]ejecting all state-led and market pathways to change also comes at a price’; and delaying action ‘also has a justice implication’ (230-33). Newell’s conclusion, that muddling through, engaging in the messy politics of negotiation and compromise and learning by doing are ‘the incremental, inevitable and necessary day-to-day politics of transition’ (234), so that transitions in turn ‘may well be incremental, cumulative, messy and multidirectional for the most part’ (237-8) does not preclude either efforts to tilt towards social justice at all times, or the simultaneous pursuit of more radical forms of direct action, but still it will not please everyone. It leads him to reassert, in conclusion, that it is imperative that business should not dictate the terms of transition, which should be about ‘a different type of state and a different type of market and the move from an extractive to a regenerative economy’, while warning that ‘if the purposes of energy policy and assumptions about whose energy needs take priority and who pays the social and environmental price of conventional energy pathways are not up for discussion and contestation, the prospects of a meaningful just transition, let alone broader transformations, appear remote indeed’ (239-40).
What is the prospect, then, for the disassembling of incumbent power organised around the fossil fuel complex? We are certainly in for a rapid transition, but pretty much everything points at the moment to a transition largely on capital's terms. Early on, Newell cites Kolya Abramsky (2010):
[Marx] would share Abramsky’s view that ‘[a] discussion of energy cannot be separated from a discussion of capitalism, crisis and class struggle’ (2010: 11). He might be more interested in debates about energy democracy and struggles to spark a ‘worldwide energy revolution’ to re-common energy. He would echo Abramsky’s (2010: 10) claim that ‘[a] class analysis of energy helps to situate the contemporary evolution of the energy sector in general, and the expanding renewable energy sector in particular, within systemic dynamics’. And he would be sympathetic to the claim that ‘the transition process to a new energy system is, in effect, the next round of global class struggle over control of the means of production and subsistence’ (2010: 10)'.
And at the very end, he invokes Abramsky's nightmare scenario of a transition that strengthens capital and incumbent holders of power:
'Energy generation and distribution plays a key role in shaping human relations. Every form of energy implies a particular organisation of work and division of labor (both in general and in the energy sector in particular). The most significant social, economic, cultural, political and technological transformations in history were associated with shifts in energy generation: from hunting and gathering to agriculture, from human and animal power for transport and production to wind and the steam engine, from coal and oil and nuclear fission as drivers of industry and war. All these transformations have led to increased concentration of power and wealth. And a very real possibility exists that the coming transformation in the world’s energy system will result in similar shifts in power relations' (2010: 8).
George Bush (Sr) was adamant, thirty years ago, that no measures that threatened the American way of life could be contemplated; Connie Hedegaard (the EU's Climate Commissioner in 2011), insisted that European climate policies needed to work ‘in a way that will not hamper economic growth in Europe but which leaves companies maximum flexibility to cut emissions at least cost’ (cited, p. 122); the leaders of China and India ask why the costs should be borne by the poor in the developing world; and the leaked responses to the current IPCC proposals show similar attitudes are rife across the world. But capital has no means for caring about the American way of life, the European growth rate, the degree of poverty in India, China, or anywhere else, or the particular concerns of the governments of Australia, Japan, or Saudi Arabia (among others cited in the BBC report). Its goal is self-accumulation; its immanent laws dictate that such accumulation will be conflictive and subject inevitably to recurrent crisis; and a point has now been reached at which those laws have the future development of humanity at their mercy. I don't accept that so long as capital remains in command, the destruction of the planet as a habitable space for human beings is inevitable. It is just as likely that technological advances, increasing intensification of competition among workers on a global scale, far sharper reductions in welfare than we have seen until now, and the forced return of whole swathes of the world's population to the Stone Age may create the conditions for the survival of a much reduced global population, inevitably far more closely policed and far more unequal than at present. I'm aware that my solution, which is to cycle off to my allotment in sunny south Manchester, pick some late raspberries and the last courgettes (a.k.a. zucchini), plant some garlic, shallots and onions for next year, then come home to look into replacing the gas boiler with an air source heat pump, is not going to make much difference. But there we are. In our different ways, we have to try anyway.
References
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