Exploring the Life of Solar Panels
Or Why J-B Fressoz is Right
Based on a year-and-a-half of fieldwork exploring the life cycle of solar panels in the United States, Dunlap argues that the concept of “energy transition” needs to be discarded and so do its partner terms: “renewable energy” and “sustainable development.” As it currently stands, these concepts are manipulative, misleading and preventing adequate socioecological action. In agreement with Jean-Baptiste Fressoz latest book ‘More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy’ this point will be advanced by exploring solar panel development across five sites: Mining, manufacturing, operation and recycling, which includes general electronic waste recycling in a US Federal Prison. While Dunlap is an advocate of lower-carbon technologies, such as wind, solar and micro-hydroelectric energy extraction, this presentation shows how painfully disconnected the political debates and terminology are from the reality of solar, but also the industrial production of lower-carbon technologies and the onset of socioecological crisis itself.
After the talk there will be a small reception.
Xander Dunlap
Xander Dunlap is a postdoctoral research fellow at Boston University Institute for Global (IGS), USA, and a visiting research fellow in the Global Development Studies Department, University of Helsinki, Finland. Their work has critically examined police-military transformations, market-based conservation, wind energy development and extractive projects more generally in Latin America, Europe and the United States. They have written numerous books, most recently This System is Killing Us: Land Grabbing, the Green Economy & Ecological Conflict.