Decommodified energy: An anticapitalist energy justice agenda

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-2026

Department

Department of Social Sciences

Abstract

Energy justice proposes a framework for identifying inequities in the production, distribution, and consumption of energy to illuminate equitable energy transition pathways. However, energy justice scholarship may lack the necessary tools and imaginaries to effectively identify and overcome the obstacles to achieving these transitions. This perspective argues that these obstacles are fundamentally rooted in the capitalist logics of enclosure, perpetual economic growth, and capital accumulation – these same logics drive the destruction of biophysical reality and social relations. Just as we confidently attribute current global warming to human-induced activities like burning fossil fuels, energy justice scholars should assert with equal certainty that the accumulation of greenhouse gases, biodiversity loss, and the persistence of ecologically destructive and socially exploitive energy systems are the direct consequences of capitalist logics a key driver being the commodification of energy through rates schemes that financialize speculative investments. While energy could be delivered as a fundamental human need or a market commodity, its treatment as the latter is a foundational cause of energy injustice. The energy justice discipline must center alternatives like decolonization, decommodification, and degrowth to move beyond compartmentalized frameworks and directly confront the root causes of injustice and expand the imaginaries necessary to achieve an equitable socio-ecological transformation.

Publication Title

Energy Research and Social Science

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