In this episode we will discuss renewable energy colonialism, impact on local communities, and the NIMBY rhetoric.

Renewable Energy Colonialism in the Global South and the Global North
Impact of renewable energy projects on local communities
The Not in my backyard (NIMBY) rhetoric

Our guest Dr Susana Batel is an assistant researcher at University Institute of Lisbon , Portugal. For over a decade her research has focused on adopting a critical approach to examine the relation between re-presentation, identities, power, discourse and communication, and social change, namely regarding public participation in environmental issues, and public responses to renewable energy and associated technologies. She has 80+ published works and is a Co-Editor of the journal Papers on Social Representations.

Our interviewer Nyasha Milanzi is an undergraduate student in Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Ashesi University, Ghana. Her research focuses on developing low cost sensors for use in air quality monitoring and dust soiling on solar PV measurements.

Episode notes and references:

Music by: Ritesh Prasanna

Audio editing and transcripts by: Paras Singh and Raag Sethi

Podcast website: https://atmospherictales.com

Transcript:

SB: Susana Batel (Guest)

NM: Nyasha Milanzi (Interviewer)

SG: Shahzad Gani (Host)

SG: Welcome to Atmospheric Tales, a podcast that amplifies stories and experiences related to air pollution and climate change from around the world.

I’m your host, Shahzad Gani, and welcome to another episode of the Atmospheric Tales. Our guest today is an Assistant Researcher at the University Institute of Lisbon in Portugal. For over a decade, her research has focused on adopting a critical approach to examine the relation between representation, identities, power, discourse and communication, and social change, namely regarding public participation in environmental issues, and public responses to renewable energy and associated technologies. She has 80+ published works and is a co-editor of the journal Papers on Social Representations. I’m excited to welcome our guest, Dr Susana Batel.

Our interviewer today is Nyasha Milanzi. She’s an undergraduate student in Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Ashesi University, Ghana. Her research focuses on developing low-cost sensors for use in air quality monitoring and dust soiling on solar PV measurements. Welcome to the show, Susana and Nyasha!

NM: Thank you for your kind introduction, Shahzad. I’m excited to dive in our discussion. The shift to less carbon-intensive and more sustainable energy systems is centred around renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, hydro, biofuels and others. According to the International Energy Agency, over 2022-2027, renewables are forecasted to grow by almost 2,400 GW equal to the entire installed solar power capacity of China today. This rapid expansion of renewables has brought us here in discussing about renewable energy colonialism with Dr Susana Batel. Welcome to the show, Dr Susana! I’m going to jump right into our first question on renewable energy colonialism in the Global South. In the Global South, renewable energy colonialism perpetuates power dynamics that prioritise the energy needs of the Global North over the energy needs of the Global South. Despite the fact that many countries in the Global South lack access to electricity (for example, 597 million Africans did not have access to electricity) and rely on harmful forms of energy, such as biomass for cooking (approximately 600,000 lives are lost each year in sub-Saharan Africa due to exposure to biomass smoke), the focus of renewable energy production in these regions is often centered around export to the Global North. This is evident in the case of green hydrogen, where the potential for energy poverty alleviation in Africa is overshadowed by the emphasis on export to the European market. For example, I quote a statement from the European Investment Bank website—“Large-scale green hydrogen generation will enable Africa to supply 25 million tons of green hydrogen to global energy markets, equivalent to 15% of current gas used in the European Union.” Dr Susana, the followers of the podcast would like to know how colonialism mechanisms are at play here, and also, how can their governments and policymakers prioritize the energy needs in their respective countries before they can look into feeding the energy-rich countries, particularly in the Global North.

SB: Thank you, Nyasha, for your question, and also Shahzad, for the introduction and the invitation, to both of you, to be here. So, that’s a very good question and actually, this focus on green hydrogen is a very relevant one. And, actually, even here, in Portugal, from where I’m speaking, we’re also having a Valdez rush into this new gold, so say, of the green hydrogen as a key solution to resolve climate change. And actually, even if we are in the Global North, but still in the south of Europe, so a peripheral region as well, that is also shaped by correlations with other Northern countries. And so actually, we’re also having exactly the same debate. And also, green hydrogen, is it green, first off—and that’s what I will get to in a minute as well—so the way it is produced, can we really say it is green, and also for whom is this national strategy being proposed and enforced? So thinking about Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa specifically, and again, also this now run for green hydrogen, a lot of issues come to play here that make us think of it as this renewable energy colonialism. So one of them is precisely even starting, as I was saying, by this notion of renewable energy colonialism, allowing us to think for whom is this being produced, as I was saying, is also the case for Portugal. So if we look at the rhetoric behind these efforts and agendas to foster the production of green hydrogen, we see that, precisely, a lot of it is with a view towards economic growth and towards exporting it to the Global North. So local regions and communities where it will be produced, and also their local resources, based on which their livelihoods depend a lot, such as water, land, agricultural land, and so on and so forth, they will be damaged and taken for this purpose, but with most of the benefits then to be exported, as you said, to other countries and other regions of the world, specifically in the Global North. So that’s already a key aspect, obviously, of what makes it renewable energy colonialism. And, what that first aspect brings to the fore as well is precisely this issue that it is being sold as green, but actually, for instance, as you also highlighted, it uses water to produce this green hydrogen. And this means, in turn, that you should be in a region to produce it, that’s very, there’s very abundant water. And if not, you’re not only probably contributed to further desertify that area, but even to, there’s also uncertainty, what will be the consequences for water resources in the area as well, out of this process for hydrogen, green hydrogen production. The other key issue that is being debated as well also related then with this renewable energy colonialism, is precisely that then for it to be green, it implies that the electricity generated to part this water and make the green hydrogen, it needs to come from renewable energy sources. And what this often implies, is then that there will have to be built large scale energy infrastructures, such as big wind farms, or solar plants, and so on and so forth, that will then feed into this green hydrogen production, which in turn these plants as well, they also have often, they also come with a lot of local impacts and impacts for communities, and if they are not deployed in a way that involves everyone and the local communities, regional communities, national communities, etc., then those harms will for sure, be even more no, so, often what happens is precisely that is that there are no benefits for the local communities, and there are only detrimental effects. So it’s often done through this top-down, technocentric and extractivist persp...