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Palgrave Macmillan

Contested Energy Futures

Capturing the Renewable Energy Surge in Australia

  • Book
  • © 2022

Overview

Authors:
  1. Stuart Rosewarne

    1. Department of Political Economy, University of Sydney, Newtown, Australia

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  • Provides a rich analysis of the diverse social forces that are contesting the making of our energy future
  • Builds on the story of a burgeoning energy democracy movement seeking to consolidate the renewable energy surge
  • Offers rich insights into struggles to forge an energy democracy that contests the might of the coal-industrial complex

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Table of contents (15 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xvi
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction

    • Stuart Rosewarne
    Pages 1-9

  3. The Hegemony of Coal in the Australian Political Economy: Digging Deeper

    • Stuart Rosewarne
    Pages 11-46

  4. Holding Back the Renewable Energy Surge: But Change Is in the Air

    • Stuart Rosewarne
    Pages 47-78

  5. The Uneven Path to a Renewable Energy Future: From the Laissez Faire Market Rhetoric and Beyond

    • Stuart Rosewarne
    Pages 79-114

  6. Households’ Embrace of Renewable Energy: The Birth of the Prosumer and Pathway to Empowerment?

    • Stuart Rosewarne
    Pages 115-144

  7. The Metamorphosis of the Household: Household Electricity Generation the Sine Qua Non of Empowerment

    • Stuart Rosewarne
    Pages 145-169

  8. Subordinating the Household to the Rhythms of Energy Capital

    • Stuart Rosewarne
    Pages 171-205

  9. Climate Citizens Embracing Renewable Energy: Re-municipalisation

    • Stuart Rosewarne
    Pages 207-232

  10. Local Governments as Conduits for Progressing Climate Change Action in Australia

    • Stuart Rosewarne
    Pages 233-252

  11. Breaking from the Industrial Energy Generation Model Fossil Fuel Complex: Community Renewable Energy Cooperatives

    • Stuart Rosewarne
    Pages 253-279

  12. Renewable Energy Cooperatives Challenging the Liberalised Energy Economy in Australia

    • Stuart Rosewarne
    Pages 281-298

  13. Holding onto Fossil Fuels

    • Stuart Rosewarne
    Pages 299-330

  14. The Irrevocable Transition to Renewable Energy: Coal’s Death Knell

    • Stuart Rosewarne
    Pages 331-369

  15. Capturing the Renewable Energy Surge: Navigating a Future for Renewable Energy

    • Stuart Rosewarne
    Pages 371-395

  16. Challenging Fossil Fuel Capital: The Promise of the Renewable Energy Surge

    • Stuart Rosewarne
    Pages 397-416

  17. Back Matter

    Pages 417-424
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Keywords

About this book

This book unpacks the politics of climate change in Australia in the context of successive conservative Coalition governments resisting any moves to mitigate emissions and as local communities and transnational corporations struggle with each other to control the transition to a sustainable energy future. As Australia has abundant clean energy resources in terms of solar and wind, the book offers a test case for study of the energy policy transition in the 21st century. It does so by using tools from political economy and sociology, teasing out public attitudes to renewable energy technologies and innovative infrastructure investments, unpacking the complex parameters of this historical debate, tracing the rise of household 'prosumers' and arguing the case for grassroots ownership of renewable infrastructure or 'energy sovereignty' - already pioneered by some isolated communities in Australia. The cultural and emancipatory benefits of cooperative ventures are well known. However, capitalism is not readily defeated by democracy. The promotion of individual households as 'virtual power stations', of 'smart technologies' and even of cryptocurrency into the energy transition innovative mix opens up ever new horizons for corporate control.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of Political Economy, University of Sydney, Newtown, Australia

    Stuart Rosewarne

About the author

Stuart Rosewarne has established a rich research record in the field of environmental and ecological political economy. His research has been published in international journals and the book Climate Action Upsurge: The Ethnography of Climate Movement Politics published in collaboration in 2014 on the development of the climate movement politics was well received. The collaboratively-researched and authored Beyond Coal Rush: A Turning Point for Global Energy and Climate Policy, which is a comparative study of reliance on coal in Australia, Germany and India was published in 2020. Stuart has led the development of the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney as one of the world’s leading research centres for studies on the political economy of climate change. He designed and lectures in the long-running innovative program on multi-disciplinary based Political Economy of the Environment’.

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