In this last week of March, I attended a Summer School organised by the ReSET consortium at IIHS. It has been two and a half days of a lot of questions and as always too few answers. However, to be fair some of these questions are also new to me since I have only now placed my inquiries within the energy transitions domain. I haven’t previously documented questions and thoughts from academic interactions on my blog. But with this, I hope to initiate a personal effort to find firm ground for the fleeting yet fervent ideas that arise in such interdisciplinary gatherings.
On the first day, in the first hour, eleven of us that formed the summer school cohort (nine doctoral candidates and two lone doctoral aspirants / practitioners), were tasked with creating an energy timeline for India. Now, this isn’t new. It has been traced in academic research, policy documents and in media as well. However, bringing together all the different energy sources, policies, key events, social movements, global issues on one timeline was and is always a hard task. What makes it to the limited space on the floor and what remains left out?
Mind you, this is our introduction to each other as well, since we all come from different fields of practice, knowledge levels and academic backgrounds. So, it was an impromptu discussion on what were the crucial moments in shaping the energy narrative in the country. A lot was left out on the floor, but a lot was gained, in terms of understanding each other’s entry point to this conference and energy research.
I have put together a digital version of our sticky note timeline below for those that are interested to learn about unseemingly connected events in our energy history.
How can we radicalise energy politics?
We all live in an energy insecure world. That much is established. Which is why there is an appeal of energy security within the renewables.
Politics of coal: Welfarism
Politics of oil: Neo-liberalism
What is the politics of renewables?
Renewables have a decentralised nature, it really depends on how we plan for its operations, governance and holistically for the transition. Prof. Mark Swilling from the Centre for Sustainability Transitions at Stellenbosch University very succinctly put across the various positions on just transitions:
Position 1: Renewables promise economic growth and more jobs.
Position 2: More jobs for a very skilled group of people, but there has to be welfare provided for those that are going to be negatively impacted
Position 3: (From trade unions) Renewables have the power to transcend capitalism and move towards a socialist world.
Bruno Latour’s inquiries of what is the agency of material objects in this domain, echoed through everything that was being said.
The most subversive thought within this summer school for was: Are the increase in renewables really contributing to decarbonisation? If it isn’t the clean energy that is is being made out to be, what are we transitioning for? This rang true especially in the case of Pavagada which was a case study for us and a context to ideate potential just futures.
Prof. Maarten Hajer had an interesting presentation on dramaturgy and the performance of governance. He spoke about the way every one wanting to create change is essentially performing to ensure it is realised. For example island nations having a climate discussion underwater to appeal to the rest of the world that they are mere years away from losing their land to sea level rise. Even in the political discourse, one has to carefully watch out for the dramaturgies playing out. After all – all the world’s a stage. He also spoke about futuring, which is an interesting way of building consensus – imagining scenarios for the future. However, being able to do this comes with great privilege and each of us needs to be very clear of our positionalities. India, for instance doesn’t have the luxury of futuring as compared to say, the Netherlands. And as Prof. Mark Swilling exclaimed what the Global South does have is the evolutionary potential of the present.
Read part 2 of my insights from the summer school here.
namratanarendra.com 
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