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.
AkhterM (2015) Infrastructure nation: state space, hegemony, and hydraulic regionalism in Pakistan. Antipode47(4): 849–870.
2.
AkhterM (2022) Dams, development, and racialised internal peripheries: hydraulic imaginaries as hegemonic strategy in Pakistan. Antipode54(5): 1429–1450.
3.
BakaJVaishnavaS (2020) The evolving borderland of energy geographies. Geography Compass14(7): e12493.
4.
BridgeGGailingL (2020) New energy spaces: towards a geographical political economy of energy transition. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space52(6): 1037–1050.
5.
CarrilloI (2021) The racial fix and environmental state formation. Current Sociology69(5): 641–659.
6.
CurleyA (2018) A failed green future: Navajo green jobs and energy ‘transition’ in the Navajo Nation. Geoforum; Journal of Physical, Human, and Regional Geosciences88: 57–65.
7.
DestekMAHossainMRKhanZ (2024) Premature deindustrialization and environmental degradation. Gondwana Research127: 199–210.
8.
DewanC (2020) ‘Climate change as a spice’: brokering environmental knowledge in Bangladesh’s development industry. Ethnos87(3): 538–559.
9.
GarveyANormanJBBüchsM, et al. (2022) A ‘spatially just’ transition? A critical review of regional equity in decarbonisation pathways. Energy Research and Social Science88: 102630.
10.
GerganMD (2020) Disastrous hydropower, uneven regional development, and decolonization in India’s Eastern Himalayan borderlands. Political Geography80: 102175.
11.
GolubchikovOO’SullivanK (2020) Energy periphery: uneven development and the precarious geographies of low-carbon transition. Energy and Buildings211: 109818.
12.
GreenFGambhirA (2019) Transitional assistance policies for just, equitable and smooth low-carbon transitions: who, what and how?Climate Policy20(8): 902–921.
13.
GreenGP (2020) Deindustrialization of rural America: economic restructuring and the rural ghetto. Local Development and Society1(1): 15–25.
14.
HarveyD (1981) The spatial fix–Hegel, von Thunen, and Marx. Antipode 13(3): 1–12.
15.
IrengbamMSneddonC (2025) The making of a hydrofrontier: geopolitics, securitization and ‘green’ energy imaginaries in India’s eastern borderlands. Political Geography121: 103378.
16.
JessopB (2002) Liberalism, neoliberalism, and urban governance: a state–theoretical perspective. Antipode 34(3): 452–472.
17.
LiCWangM (2023) Green and low-carbon-oriented urban redevelopment: the transformation of urban governance in China. In: ErgencCGoodmanD (eds) Handbook on Local Governance in China. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp.260–271.
18.
MasseyD (1995) Social relations and spatial organisation. In: Spatial Divisions of Labour. London: Palgrave, pp.12–64.
19.
MasseyDMeeganR (1989) Spatial divisions of labour in Britain. In: GregoryDWalfordR (eds) Horizons in Human Geography. London: Palgrave, pp.244–257.
20.
NightingaleAJEriksenSTaylorM, et al. (2019) Beyond technical fixes: climate solutions and the great derangement. Climate and Development12(4): 343–352.
21.
NightingaleAJEriksenSTaylorM, et al. (2020) Beyond technical fixes: climate solutions and the great derangement. Climate and Development 12(4): 343–352.
22.
NochtaTSkelcherC (2020) Network governance in low-carbon energy transitions in European cities: a comparative analysis. Energy Policy138: 111298.
23.
PaprockiK (2019) All that is solid melts into the bay: anticipatory ruination and climate change adaptation. Antipode51(1): 295–315.
24.
PoupeauFM (2017) III. Du département aux régions. 30 ans de recomposition de la présence d'EDF-ENEdis sur les territoires. Annuaire des Collectivités Locales 37(1): 89–105.
25.
PoupeauFM (2020) Metropolitan and rural areas fighting for the control of electricity networks in France: a local geopolitics approach to energy transition. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space38(3): 464–483.
26.
QinCLiangYCaoY (2024) Spatial characteristics and dynamic differences of power industry’s low carbon transition efficiency. Scientific Reports14(1): 18873.
27.
RietigK (2021) Accelerating low carbon transitions via budgetary processes? EU climate governance in times of crisis. Journal of European Public Policy28(7): 1018–1037.
28.
Rodríguez-PoseABartalucciF (2024) The green transition and its potential territorial discontents. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society17(2): 339–358.
29.
SareenSInderbergTHJEikelandPO (2025) Are low-carbon futures decentralised? Directional flows in the changing governance of collective electricity systems. In: SareenSEikelandPOInderbergTHJ (eds) Are Low-Carbon Futures Decentralised?Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp.1–25.
30.
SchindlerSGillespieTBanksN, et al. (2020) Deindustrialization in cities of the Global South. Area Development and Policy5(3): 283–304.
31.
SmithN (1989) Uneven development and location theory: towards a synthesis. In: PeetRThriftN (eds) New Models in Geography: Vol. 1. The Political-Economy Perspective. London: Routledge, pp.170–193. DOI: 10.4324/9780203400531.
32.
SovacoolBK (2021) Who are the victims of low-carbon transitions? Towards a political ecology of climate change mitigation. Energy Research and Social Science73: 101916.
33.
SovacoolBKBrisboisM-C (2019) Elite power in low-carbon transitions: a critical and interdisciplinary review. Energy Research and Social Science57: 101242.
34.
SwyngedouwE (2010) Apocalypse forever? Theory, Culture & Society 27(2–3): 213–232.
35.
ThomasAEricksonJD (2021) Rethinking the geography of energy transitions: low carbon energy pathways through energyshed design. Energy Research and Social Science74: 101941.
36.
TieMZhuM (2022) Interpreting low-carbon transition at the subnational level: evidence from China using a natural language processing approach. Resources, Conservation and Recycling187: 106636.
37.
TornelC (2022) Decolonizing energy justice from the ground up: political ecology, ontology, and energy landscapes. Progress in Human Geography47(1): 43–65.
