There is nothing new about renewable energy: Tracing the life of solar panels
This article is a write-up about the event “Exploring the Life of Solar Panels or Why J-B Fressoz is Right” (August 26, 2025) where Alexander A. Dunlap, postdoctoral research fellow at Boston University Institute for Global Sustainability (IGS), USA, presented their research. The article is written by CApE writer Semine Long-Callesen for Resilience.org.
The transition to renewable energy sources – wind, water, and solar – away from coal, oil, and gas is an industry and policy stunt that never really happened, if you ask Alexander A. Dunlap, postdoc at Boston University. Global coal consumption breaks records year after year despite the invention of solar panels. In fact, there has never been a time when companies and states burned as much fossil fuel as they do today. “The idea of renewable energy obscures the persistence of old systems,” says Dunlap, referencing JB Fressoz’s work on the industry of so-called sustainable energy that since the 1970s has been promoted politically. Industrial-scale renewable energy does not offer an alternative to the capitalist order and its exploitative relationships to earth.
It was with this insight that Dunlap embarked on a research trip across the US to map out the life cycle of solar panels. What they found was that not only does coal persist: the material journey of solar panels is completely entangled with historic structures of extraction and labor exploitation. The solar panel supply chain follows the same mining sites, rail roads, factory facilities, and prison institutions that otherwise were core sites of liberation struggles in the 20th century. Low carbon infrastructures exist within the exact same system as high emission energy sources.
Read the full article here: There is nothing new about renewable energy: Tracing the life of solar panels