Energopower, statecraft and political legitimacy

Abstract

This paper draws on the notion of energopower ( Boyer 2014 ) to show the foundational role of electricity in the (re)production of political power in Australia. I show how conflicts surrounding electricity have reconstituted state-market-society relations and rescaled governance. I study a series of notable national-scale interventions and argue that, through the contingent and chaotic play of events in the political sphere, market-oriented governance regimes for electricity have been weakened, and the issue of electricity decarbonisation has become ‘weaponised’ for electoral benefit. I explain how national political leadership in Australia has stepped in from a constitutionally-weak position to govern electricity under pressure for environmentally-driven adaptation. I show four statecraft techniques that reconstitute electricity in new ways: discursively linking electricity governance to socio-environmental futures; national interest framings that are weaponized for electoral gain; tactical governance through parliamentary compromise and appeasement; and jettisoning market logics in favour of state intervention. This study recognises the limits of centralized state-making under a Federalist system but shows the potential for statecraft to reshape scalar-territorial relations and strengthen the role of the central state vis-à-vis the market. Vital resources like electricity are not just struggled over but, under the right conditions, can come to shape political power. There is neither infinite potential for state rescaling through the performance of legitimacy, nor do rigid scalar hierarchies simply block reconfigurations of state power. To understand the potential for resource struggles to re-scale state power attention must be paid to the techniques of statecraft that support and undermine legitimacy.

The end of the experiment? The energy crisis, neoliberal energy, and the limits to a socio-ecological fix

“…The UK government is taking increasingly extreme second order measures to preserve the privatised system, ramping up the subsidies to electricity capital, maintaining price controls introduced as temporary measures and guaranteeing more prices for generation and production. Consistent with other wealthy nations, these second order changes strengthen the power and role of the state and lead in renewed struggles over the public control of energy (Chandrashekeran, 2022). If the government is setting prices and pumping public money into keeping the system going, it opens up political space to challenge why private companies are allowed to profit so heavily from an energy system so reliant on state largesse (Lawrence and Bueller, 2022).…”

For and against climate capitalism

“…Australia's electricity market is hyper-neoliberalised, structured by an ideological-if not practised-commitment to competition and least cost. The market experienced substantial restructuring through the rolling privatisation and deregulation of electricity governance beginning in the 1990s (Chandrashekeran, 2021(Chandrashekeran, , 2022. This transformation targeted state-owned, vertically integrated provision and introduced a collection of regulatory agencies and bodies to oversee the market rules of the unbundled grid, and generation, grid, and retailing functions.…”

“…This transformation targeted state‐owned, vertically integrated provision and introduced a collection of regulatory agencies and bodies to oversee the market rules of the unbundled grid, and generation, grid, and retailing functions. Despite the challenges and contradictions of marketizing this complex infrastructure, the reactions to various failures have been to fail forward into ongoing “market tinkering” (Chandrashekeran, 2022, p. 7).…”

Introduction: Uneven geographies of electricity capital

“…In the 1980s, international agencies began to push for electric utility restructuring to support market-based liberalization including corporatization, independent regulation, and private sector involvement in electricity generation, transmission, and distribution (Beder 2003;Sen 2014;Furnaro 2020;Gore et al 2019;Kelly and Valdés Negroni 2021). Liberalization is intended to create the conditions for profitable investment for electricity capital (Chandrashekeran, 2022;Harrison, 2020;van den Bold, 2021). Harvey, in conversation with Arundhati Roy's analysis in Power Politics, describes the privatization of energy companies as a dialectically related process of extended reproduction and "accumulation by dispossession."…”

“…Electricity restructuring followed countless halting and varied paths (McDonald 2009(McDonald , 2014L Baker, 2021;Chandrashekeran, 2022;van den Bold, 2021). Corporatization created new shareholder interests and deregulation opened space for independent power producers that operate alongside restructured utilities.…”