Competition,capital accumulation,and the geographical organization of production in the North Atlantic offshore wind energy industry

Abstract

As offshore wind energy development expands throughout the advanced industrial world, the wind turbine manufacturing industry has been passing through a process of organizational and geographical restructuring. In terms of the dynamics of industrial organization, highly concentrated industrial conglomerates have gained a stronger position within the industry as the ownership of capital has been centralized through bankruptcies, mergers and acquisitions. Geographically, some regions are maintaining their pre-eminence within the international division of labour while other longstanding industrial clusters are being dismantled as production processes are being fragmented, transformed and dispersed to new regions. This article illuminates these dynamics of geographical organization through an analysis of (offshore) wind turbine manufacturing in Europe for deployment in Europe and the United States, advancing a unified approach to understanding changing modes of industrial organization and the development of the spatial division of labour. This unified approach is rooted in the examination of material transformations in the process of production, with attention to the specificities of wind energy as a natural resource. Taking up scientific advances made by Marx, radical industrial geographers and contemporary critics of political economy, the article demonstrates that the centralization of capital and the simultaneous spatial consolidation and dispersal of production have been necessary concrete forms of the development of the productive forces of social labour. The article concludes by reflecting on some of the barriers to the increasing fragmentation of wind turbine manufacturing and the potentialities for working-class organization borne by the centralization of capital and the consolidation of production.