In this more optimistic take on the collapse of the oil industry, Mitchell Schurman paints a hopeful picture of the "advanced energy" industry supplanting its fossil fuel predecessor. As major oil companies continue to cut thousands of jobs, many energy engineers and investors are turning their sights to renewables. In Texas, in particular, the industry boasts a whopping 230,000 employees, a number that is growing at twice the rate of its general labor market (at least pre-pandemic). Furthermore, most of the energy projects in the pipeline for the ERCOT grid (in Texas) involve some mixture of wind, solar, or renewable energy storage.
According to the experts, it is clear that advanced energy is the way of the future. What is not clear, however, is whether or not a transition away from fossil fuels promises a meaningful change in energopolitics. That is not to say that the transition away from fossil fuels is not necessary, it undoubtedly is. But many scholars have pointed out that the worst of the social and environmental problems of the fossil fuel industry could be perpetuated or even exacerbated through the switch renewable energy (Hickel 2017, Howe 2019, Boyer 2019, Dagget 2020). Not everyone is excited about the renewable energy projects in Texas, and for understandable reasons (see this controversy over a solar project in Bastrop County). Which is to say that ensuring the ethics of the politics and economics by which we undertake this transition is tantamount to ensuring the ethics of the renewable energy system that will emerge from it.
Anonymous, "Can clean energy help plug the hole in the oil patch? ", contributed by James Adams, The Energy Rights Project, Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, last modified 7 December 2020, accessed 25 April 2024. https://energyrights.info/content/can-clean-energy-help-plug-hole-oil-patch
Critical Commentary
In this more optimistic take on the collapse of the oil industry, Mitchell Schurman paints a hopeful picture of the "advanced energy" industry supplanting its fossil fuel predecessor. As major oil companies continue to cut thousands of jobs, many energy engineers and investors are turning their sights to renewables. In Texas, in particular, the industry boasts a whopping 230,000 employees, a number that is growing at twice the rate of its general labor market (at least pre-pandemic). Furthermore, most of the energy projects in the pipeline for the ERCOT grid (in Texas) involve some mixture of wind, solar, or renewable energy storage.
According to the experts, it is clear that advanced energy is the way of the future. What is not clear, however, is whether or not a transition away from fossil fuels promises a meaningful change in energopolitics. That is not to say that the transition away from fossil fuels is not necessary, it undoubtedly is. But many scholars have pointed out that the worst of the social and environmental problems of the fossil fuel industry could be perpetuated or even exacerbated through the switch renewable energy (Hickel 2017, Howe 2019, Boyer 2019, Dagget 2020). Not everyone is excited about the renewable energy projects in Texas, and for understandable reasons (see this controversy over a solar project in Bastrop County). Which is to say that ensuring the ethics of the politics and economics by which we undertake this transition is tantamount to ensuring the ethics of the renewable energy system that will emerge from it.