Abramsky, Kolya | United Kingdom, USA
Kolya Abramsky has been active in different anti-authoritarian global networking processes for over ten years and has lived in a number of countries in western Europe and USA.
His work has included a range of activities: mobilizations, international solidarity campaigns, educational activities, publications and translation work. For the last 6 years he has been active in renewable energy related work. Most recently, in 2006, he worked in the secretariat of the World Wind Energy Institute for its launch as a an international effort in non-commercial renewable energy technology education and training at the Nordic Folkecenter for Renewable Energy in Denmark. After nearly ten years of working outside the university, and much skepticism about the role of “public intellectuals”, he began working on a PhD in the sociology department at State University of New York Binghamton in 2005, where, he has been working on energy related conflicts in the world economy. Now, in the midst of a world-wide financial crisis of epic proportions, and an increasingly conflictive energy crisis, he is eager to finish the current research that he is working on as fast as possible in order to get back into grassroots organizing rather than just reflecting on the world from afar…
As a Research Fellow at the IAS-STS Kolya Abramsky was awarded with the Manfred-Heindler-grant.
Project at IAS-STS: Process of transition of renewable energy
My work concerns the process of transition away from fossil fuels and nuclear energy and towards a far reaching and rapid world-wide transition to 100% renewable energy use. The key questions I seek to pose and at least partially answer are:
- What processes and institutions (from local to global) already exist to promote renewable energy? What constraints limit the scope and speed of this process?
- How are these processes and institutions simultaneously being shaped by and shaping different alliances and conflicts? What is their relationship to the non-renewable energy sector?
- Are multiple different transitions possible? What factors will determine the outcome?
- Will a chaotic transition exacerbate existing hierarchies and conflicts? Or, will transition be part of a process of constructing world-wide relations of production, exchange and livelihood that are more egalitarian, decentralized, and ecologically sensitive than currently existing relations?
The expansion of the renewable energy is, seemingly, taking a paradoxical form. On the one hand the sector has until now developed incredibly slowly, non-linearly and in comparatively few places in the world. On the other hand, resource scarcity, climate change, surplus finance capital, and militarized conflict in oil rich regions are all material pressures pushing towards a rapid global expansion. The urgency of “peak oil”, and especially climate change, are ushering in a new scenario. The end of “the fossil fuels era” may be postponed, but it cannot be prevented. In all probability it cannot even be postponed for much longer. A transition beyond petrol is no longer an ideological choice. It is increasingly a necessity imposed by material constraints. Already demand for renewable energy infrastructure far outstrips supply. The renewable energy sector seems set to become a new global growth sector.
It is no longer a question of whether a transition will occur, but rather what form it will take. Which technologies will it include and on whose terms and priorities? Who will pay the costs and who will reap the benefits? Who can harness the necessary global flows of capital, raw materials, knowledge and labor? Rather than being a technical inevitability, transition will be the result of an uncertain and lengthy process of collective struggle.
Drawing on world-historical perspectives of previous energy transitions, especially the shift from coal to oil, my research will focus on developments of the last half century, including the years just prior to the energy crisis of the 1970s, which was a key moment in the recent evolution of the renewable energy sector.
My research seeks to situate the current “energy crisis”, “peak oil” and the “transition” to a post-petrol future within a historical understanding of world-wide capitalist social relations. Capitalism is understood as totality of world-wide social relations that have existed since at least the 16th Century, and have expanded both geographically and quantitatively since then to incorporate the entire world. Its key structures, described below, are understood as being a world-market, an interstate system, and a world wide division of labor. I will use two analytical perspectives which have been developed to understand capitalist social relations (world-systems and class composition analyses) to analyze the alliances, conflicts and hierarchies defining the renewable energy sector’s global expansion.
Renewable energy-based technologies were crucial to the rise of capitalist relations. Sailing boats conquered the world, windmills ground sugar cane on slave plantations, land was drained by wind and water powered pumps (essential to Dutch hegemony), and the increased use of artificial lighting played a crucial role in lengthening the working day. Later, coal powered steam engine gave rise to the British-led industrial factory based production systems and the railway. This enabled an unprecedented increase in the productivity of labor as well as expanding the geographical reach of labor, raw materials and commodities markets, enabling capitalism to become a truly world-reaching system of social relations. The twentieth century shift towards petrol (combined with electrification) further intensified these processes. “Cheap” energy was an essential pillar of post-World War II economic growth in the USA and US hegemony globally. Increased energy inputs greatly expanded the capacity for transport, agricultural and industrial production and state military capacities At the same time, mechanization and automation were key to controlling worker unrest, while the ability to provide cheap food, heating, transport, and consumer goods dramatically brought down the costs of reproducing the labor force. These latter factors were essential pillars of the post-Second World-War Keynesian social pacts on which US hegemony was based, both within and outside the US. With the advent of coal, and later oil, the commercial use of renewable energy was largely abandoned. However, the sector has been reactivated since the energy crises of the 1970s.
Historically, energy has performed a number of key functions within the world division of labor, market and interstate system. Four areas stand out. 1) Mechanization has enabled increased productivity; 2) artificial lighting has lengthened the working day; 3) transport has enabled an expanded geographical reach for markets in raw materials, labour and commodities, as well as reducing circulation time; 4) Cheap food, shelter, clothing and consumer goods have lowered the cost of reproducing labor. The history of energy use is the history of human labor being enhanced or replaced by outside energy sources. Hence, a transition to renewable energy is not only relevant to labor within the energy sector, but also more generally to class relations in the world-economy itself.
Social forces do not exist in the abstract, but depend on collective human activity. Action aimed at promoting renewable energy requires decisions. By identifying existing lines of structural conflict within the globally expanding renewable energy sector I seek to make grounded predictions about possible future trajectories in order to evaluate existing efforts and alliances and imagine and plan for future ones.
While at the IAS I will work on two parallel books on the above questions, one an edited volume and one that I will write. The books will be published by AK Press, which is a worker-cooperative anarchist publication house based in the USA and UK. The edited volume will be issued under a Creative Commons license without copyright.
Selected Publications
2007 The Underground Challenge – Raw Materials, the World-Economy and Anti-Capitalist Struggle - A review of: Globalization and the Race for Resources by Stephen Bunker and Paul Ciccantell, in Review, XXX, 2 (Fernand Braudel Center, Binghamton)
2007 Struggles Over Transition: Emancipating Energy? in Bhagat, Alexis and Mogel Lize(eds) 2007 An Atlas of Radical Cartography. Journal of Aesthetics and Protest Press, Los Angeles.
2007 Accelerated and Far-Reaching Transition to Renewable Energies: Why, What, How and By Whom? Building New Alliances - published on the website of The World Council for Renewable Energy, available at http://wcre.org/
2006 The Bamako Appeal and The Zapatista 6th Declaration - Between Creating New Worlds and Reorganizing the Existing One in A Political Programme for the World Social Forum ? Democracy, Substance and Debate in the Bamako Appeal and the Global Justice Movements A Reader. Eds: Jai Sen and Madhuresh Kumar with Patrick Bond and Peter January 2007 - online edition prepared for Nairobi World Social Forum, January 2007
2001 (ed) Restructuring and Resistance – Diverse Voices of Struggle in Western Europe (Self published, and distributed)