Browsing by Author "Pressend, Michelle"

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    Alternatives to the economic rationalisation of renewable energy transitions: The Tsitsikamma Community Renewable Wind Farm Story
    (2023) Pressend, Michelle; Matose, Frank; Sitas, Ari
    Within the climate mitigation discourse, renewable energy technology is understood as vital to reduce coal energy reliance. This discourse which is deeply anthropocentric in its approach understands 'green' energy transitions largely as reliant on reductionist techno-scientific 'solutions' and green economic growth rationalisation. If energy transitions are not engaged with critically, ongoing injustice and extractive relationships are likely to be perpetuated. The aim of this thesis is to show that alternative renewable energy transitions as responses to global warming need to be informed from a relational perspective. Values that are respectful, regenerative, and reciprocal to nature and each other constitute the concept of relationality. This study focused on the Tsitsikamma Community Wind Farm (TCWF) in the Eastern Cape (South Africa) as a site to explore the implementation of a renewable energy project. The site on which the wind farm is built has a colonial land dispossession narrative and the return of the Tsitsikamma Mfengu community to reclaimed land in 1994. The community was a willing partner in the investment of a wind energy public-private partnership. While the beneficiaries were promised improvements to their well-being, instead, the material well-being of this community remains unchanged and the commercial agricultural land degraded. The inequalities and the social-ecological relations of the past persist. The so-called 'win-win' rhetoric is an illusion in climate mitigation approaches and largely serves capital accumulation at the expense of community well-being and restoration of the soil. This study drew inspiration from Moore's (2003) world-ecology framing - history is part of rather than separate from the web of life - a non-dualist version of world history. In the research, a multisited ethnography was used and included tracing the relationships that recognised land history, memory (patterns of material nature of the land) and the entangled relationships between humans and non-humans. The conceptual framing and methodology illuminated erasures consistently overlooked in the anthropocentric climate discourses. As a consequence of those revelations openings for more relational and decolonial conceptualisation(s) based on the profound interrelatedness of life became evident. Relational energy transitions are needed in response to the climate crisis that consider the regenerative possibilities of nature-human interrelatedness. Through this argument, the study contributes an important insight for the uptake of methodology and analysis which transcends the 'resource' logic.
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    Open Access
    Alternatives to the economic rationalisation of renewable energy transitions: the Tsitsikamma community renewable wind farm story
    (University of Cape Town, 2023) Pressend, Michelle; Matose, Frank; Sitas Ari
    Within the climate mitigation discourse, renewable energy technology is understood as vital to reduce coal energy reliance. This discourse which is deeply anthropocentric in its approach understands 'green' energy transitions largely as reliant on reductionist techno-scientific 'solutions' and green economic growth rationalisation. If energy transitions are not engaged with critically, ongoing injustice and extractive relationships are likely to be perpetuated. The aim of this thesis is to show that alternative renewable energy transitions as responses to global warming need to be informed from a relational perspective. Values that are respectful, regenerative, and reciprocal to nature and each other constitute the concept of relationality. This study focused on the Tsitsikamma Community Wind Farm (TCWF) in the Eastern Cape (South Africa) as a site to explore the implementation of a renewable energy project. The site on which the wind farm is built has a colonial land dispossession narrative and the return of the Tsitsikamma Mfengu community to reclaimed land in 1994. The community was a willing partner in the investment of a wind energy public-private partnership. While the beneficiaries were promised improvements to their well-being, instead, the material well-being of this community remains unchanged and the commercial agricultural land degraded. The inequalities and the social-ecological relations of the past persist. The so-called 'win-win' rhetoric is an illusion in climate mitigation approaches and largely serves capital accumulation at the expense of community well-being and restoration of the soil. This study drew inspiration from Moore's (2003) world-ecology framing - history is part of rather than separate from the web of life - a non-dualist version of world history. In the research, a multi-sited ethnography was used and included tracing the relationships that recognised land history, memory (patterns of material nature of the land) and the entangled relationships between humans and non- humans. The conceptual framing and methodology illuminated erasures consistently overlooked in the anthropocentric climate discourses. As a consequence of those revelations openings for more relational and decolonial conceptualisation(s) based on the profound interrelatedness of life became evident. Relational energy transitions are needed in response to the climate crisis that consider the regenerative possibilities of nature-human interrelatedness. Through this argument, the study contributes an important insight for the uptake of methodology and analysis which transcends the 'resource' logic
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    Open Access
    NUMSA's Socially Owned Renewable Energy Proposal (2012) in Response to the Green Economy Discourse: A Critical Discourse Analysis
    (2023) French, Lara; Pressend, Michelle
    In 2012 the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) published their 9th National Congress Final Economic Resolutions” (2012) which included a resolution of their proposal on ‘Building a Socially Owned Renewable Energy Sector in SA'. This proposal was primarily in response to the South African government's 2010 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) which set out a twenty-year plan to increase South Africa's renewable energy sources through public-private partnerships. The South African government's IRP and its emphasis on privatisation, green technology and green jobs can be seen as an expression of the South African government's adoption of the neoliberal green economy discourse. The problem that this research analyses is: in what ways could NUMSA's 2012 alternative proposal on socially owned renewable energy address South Africa's green economy response? This research uses a critical discourse analysis (CDA) understanding of discourse analysis where the content of discourses is not the predominant focus but also significant is the ways in which discourse manifests and interacts with social power relations and how this results in inequality and the dominance of certain groups of people over others. This research likewise does not simply describe the South African government's green economy discourse but also exposes the power relations behind it and in doing so assert the need for alternatives such as NUMSA's proposal. The research uses CDA to position NUMSA's alternative proposal of socially owned renewable energy within NUMSA's rejection of the green economy discourse as well as their interpretation of the just transition discourse. The research uses J.W. Moore's theory of the Capitalocene as a conceptual framework. It uses the Capitalocene to critique the way in which the IRP and the green economy discourse, as well as NUMSA's proposal, contain within them productivist thinking. The research goes on to show that NUMSA's proposal for socially owned renewable energy as a response to the South African government's renewable energy policy is based on the alternative theories such as ecosocialism and energy democracy. It concludes with using the Capitalocene's relational thinking, as well as degrowth and postwork, to show that there is a need for more transformative thinking in NUMSA's proposal for a socially owned renewable energy sector.