UCLA

The term ‘energy transition’, typically referring to a transition from a carbon-intensive to a low-carbon economy, has become increasingly prevalent in academic and policy circles over the past few decades. Framing energy transition as a geographic process involving the uneven and at times contradictory reconfiguration of current patterns and scales of social and economic activity, this dissertation highlights the social and political limitations to what is often uncritically cast as a technically and economically feasible transition.

This dissertation is comprised of three distinct but related studies that examine energy transitions in three contexts: globally; in Indonesia; and in California. In the context of the global energy transition, I find that the rapid increase in private finance in the global renewable energy sector has led to unprecedented growth of renewable energy generation capacity at unprecedented scales and at lower tariffs than previously thought possible. In both Indonesia and California, however, I find that the growing dominance of large-scale renewable energy projects despite the availability of smaller-scale alternatives suggests that private finance, particularly the influence of financial logic in determining project viability, has produced a particular geography of renewable energy generation that severely limits the potential for radical, systemic, and democratic transformation of the global energy system. By theorizing the relationship between forms and sources of renewable energy finance and the physical manifestation of renewable energy infrastructure, this dissertation offers a valuable counter-argument to the prevailing eco-modernist perspective that currently dominates global energy transition discourse, exemplified by the belief that “most of the new investment in renewables must come from the private sector” (IRENA and CPI, 2018, p. 38). I argue that shifting the responsibility for creating ‘bankable’ projects away from host governments toward private investors holds the potential to alter the prevailing logic of the global energy transition, which to date has rather myopically emphasized new and ever-larger renewable energy generation over the broader social and ecological benefits an energy transition may otherwise entail.

The empirical and theoretical contributions contained within this dissertation build on existing knowledge regarding the uneven political-ecological implications of the energy transition, while serving as a guide for policymakers seeking to manage the energy transition in a way that reduces the carbon-intensity of the economy while being attentive to potential contradictions and perverse outcomes that may result from reliance on particular means of achieving energy transition objectives.