Governing through transition: The spatial politics of low-carbon futurity

Abstract

Low-carbon transitions are framed as technocratic fixes to climate crisis but function instead as spatial regimes of governance and accumulation. They reorganise power, territory and legitimacy while extending, not rupturing, carbon modernity. Under the moral sign of sustainability, decarbonisation reorders value through new infrastructure, financial instruments and scalar hierarchies. The green economy governs through crisis, turning ecological repair into control and profit. Reading transitions as regimes of low-carbon futurity exposes how climate governance consolidates authority yet remains open to contestation, where struggles over energy futures are, ultimately, struggles over the geography of power itself.