The changing geographies of renewable energy: Accumulation, saturation, and contestation in Dunkirk, France

Abstract

Renewable energy technology (RET) is expanding into new territories. Technological change, increasing demand, and siting constraints increasingly lead to RET development in already urbanized or industrialized landscapes. Here, the infrastructural context could make RET less visible and/or disruptive, but it could also exacerbate existing problems (e.g., environmental degradation) and create new social conflicts over the uneven impacts of energy transitions. It is therefore crucial to understand how these changing geographies affect the acceptability of RET. We examine the case of Dunkirk, France, where a controversial offshore wind project is being pursued in a complex socio-industrial context. Drawing on 43 semi-structured interviews and detailed field observations, we examine how meanings and responses over this project are shaped by the wider landscape(s) of infrastructure, institutions, and social or economic activity in which it is implicated. We find that the acceptability of a seemingly singular new wind project is shaped in important ways by people's relations to existing energy infrastructure (such as nuclear and onshore wind) and the wider industrial complex which it expands. We thereby show how RET becomes bound up in deep-seated and uneven patterns of industrial accumulation and saturation, which it can exacerbate.