How to kill a powerline: Utility-on-utility violence,electricity capital,and the political ecology of climate delay

Abstract

A growing literature on climate obstructionism details the ways in which fossil fuel interests work to delay or block low-carbon energy projects. However, I argue that this emphasis on the carbon intensity of generating sources may distract from a more structural driver of climate delay: the dynamics of incumbency, or the ways in which existing actors seek to protect the long-term profitability of their assets, whether those run on fossil fuels, nuclear, or renewable energy. Putting incumbency rather than carbon intensity at the analytical center orients our attention to the ways in which even low-carbon energy firms may engage in “organized combat” against other renewables. Drawing from a case study of a controversial transmission line in the US state of Maine, I show how incumbent electricity capital amplified pre-existing local opposition groups to delay the entrance of this transmission line into the regional grid. In charting a conflict largely waged between nuclear generation and hydropower imports, I provide an example in which tactics of climate delay do not map onto a simple fossil fuel-renewable antagonism and are instead shaped by the regulation of wholesale electricity markets and the profit motives of incumbents. By weaponizing public participation via what one interview participant referred to as “utility-on-utility violence,” incumbent electricity capital can slow or block new entrants into the grid, while also disenfranchising local publics in energy decision-making by incriminating them as “astroturfed” pawns of capital. In turn, oppositional publics face a two-part procedural injustice: first, in the lack of public resources available to support their full involvement in an arduous permitting process, and second, in the subsequent scapegoating of these groups as astroturfed agents of capital rather than legitimate stakeholders in energy decision-making.