Energy Landscapes: effects of renewable projects in rural frontiers

Green Hydrogen (GH) is everywhere. The urgency of finding a clear decarbonization path has built momentum for this resource becoming the energy of the future. Yet, despite all its benefits the gap between investment and potential remains high. Since 2006 the Chilean government has pushed forward an ambitious agenda to install a renewable energy matrix in the country. The success of the policy is grounded in a transversal consensus across party lines regarding the importance of moving away from carbon, and a scientific effort to identify and increase public awareness of the effects of climate change on Chile's economy. Yet, the geography of its implementation has been somewhat neglected from the discussion, while rural localities are increasingly challenged by the material effects of solar farms and windmills on food production, livelihood, and local economies.

This public lecture takes a critical resource geography approach to explain this gap by using the analytical lenses offered by the intersection of speculation-friction-transition triade, to argue that the materiality of the hydrogen economy is at the core of this gap, more concretely, the contradiction in transition discourses aiming at a net zero carbon future and the material impossibility of zero impact remains the unsolved obstacle in this path.

This lecture is free and open to all. Registration is not required to attend in person.