A review of postdevelopment energies: From eco-modernity toward technological maturity

Abstract

This article aims to challenge a pervasive eco-modernity in energy research and practice, while contributing to an energy transition beyond development. Postdevelopment energies, such as those signified by the pluriverse, are needed to counter eco-modernity and overdevelopment and enable a path toward technological maturity. The article first reviews the trajectory of energy development and the prevalence of eco-modernity as a continuation of the Power Age, then turns to a review of postdevelopment and pluriversal approaches to energy and their diverse enactments. Elements of postdevelopment energies include energy-ecology and convivial energy technologies, along with complementary social, economic, and political dimensions. Energy-ecology refers to the radically diverse and highly contextualized science and practice of regenerating energy systems, as well as the social movements and modes of governance that can enable and defend these collective practices. Low-tech energy refers to various tools and techniques for meeting essential needs in ways broadly accessible, and ecologically designed to be durable, repairable, recyclable, adaptable, and functional. These dimensions interact with an enabling social, economic, and political context, alongside dominant patterns of high-energy development. So-called energy transition must increasingly give precedence to postdevelopment alternatives if life is to flourish beyond the polycrisis. The objective then is not to achieve technical substitution to sustain development but rather to enable diverse and enduring ways of living. The paper calls upon researchers and activists to shift emphasis from high-energy industrial transition to postdevelopment energies and technologies of difference.