The renewable energy transition is one of the most urgent questions facing national governments, international governance, and political economy scholarship and practice today. As extreme weather and climate events have continued to increase exponentially, temperatures rise to new records, and Antarctic glacial loss accelerates, this question is becoming even more urgent, just as global political will wanes. There has been some progress towards the transition to renewable energy in the last decade, but these efforts are still far too slow in general, and even when measured against the conservative pledges of the Climate Conference COP28. Despite all this, the ‘green energy transition’ is still a major policy goal of governments worldwide, as policy- and decision-makers hope for a technological deus ex machina that will phase out fossil fuels, defeat the climate crisis, and save humanity (i.e., electrical vehicles, soil carbon sequestration, or 3D printed coral reefs).
An underexplored issue is the impact such measures might have on populations around the globe. Most discussion on the renewable energy transition does not seriously address structural inequalities that currently pervade the provision of energy, whether via fossil fuels or otherwise, nor does it challenge capitalist social relations that has got us to this problem in the first place, instead prioritizing the profit motive and the private sector to drive the transition. The world’s largest International Financial Institutions, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), have similarly taken up interest in the ‘green transition’, and have increasingly orientated their advice, programming, and loans towards this crucial issue over the last decade.
However, both the World Bank and IMF have been accused of ‘greenwashing’ in their activities, or of imposing ‘green structural adjustment’ to render developing countries “investable” in response to climate change. In my article ‘Pipes, Profits and Peace: Toward a Feminist Political Economy of Gas during War’, which was awarded the 2024 AIPEN Richard Higgott Prize for best journal article, I analyse the cessation of government subsidies on gas to the Ukrainian population during the War in Donbas, promoted by the IMF and World Bank as a measure necessary for the green transition. I argue that the end of the subsidies for household gas, which effectively increased gas rates by 650% during a violent conflict, had a severe, gendered impact on the population, as poverty, insecurity, and negative coping mechanisms in a freezing environment drastically increased.
The ending of fossil fuel subsidies has been a major focus for both the World Bank and IMF in recent years. Fossil fuel subsidies are typically government payments to households to make the consumption of fuel cheaper, or they may take the form of direct payments to producers to keep the price of gas, petrol, or other fuels low. The World Bank has calculated that governments are spending $1.25 trillion a year on subsidies worldwide, and argued that subsidies are inefficient and are ‘making climate change worse’. The IMF, on the other hand, has determined that global subsidies actually hit closer to the $7 trillion mark when taking account of ‘implicit subsidies’ – when the price of fuel fails to account for external costs. The Fund argues that the cessation of fossil fuel subsidies will rake in revenues of $4.4 trillion, 3.6 percent of global GDP. Both institutions contend that, despite governments ostensibly trying to protect citizens from unaffordable fuel costs, ending the fossil fuel subsidy would be ‘pro-poor’.
Although the goal of addressing climate change by reducing the consumption of fossil fuels is laudable, it is arguably not the primary focus of the IMF and World Bank in their advocacy and programming to end fossil fuel subsidies. In Ukraine, the case study of my paper, these International Financial Institutions have long targeted the ending of household gas subsidies, since the end of the Soviet Union and far before any environmental concerns entered their rhetoric. As argued in my article, the rationale to end these subsidies has always been to ensure the profitability of the gas sector in Ukraine, which the World Bank and IMF have only been able to realise after pushing for widespread privatization and marketization during the most violent stages of the War in Donbas. These global institutions have prioritized a ‘strong enabling environment’ for private capital during war and in ‘freeing up gas’ for the market, doing so through novel de-risking tactics implemented during violent war in Ukraine, as I outline more fully in my upcoming book, Making War Safe for Capitalism: The World Bank, IMF and Conflict in Ukraine. The discourse on fighting climate change, rather, is more a convenient alibi than a concrete reflection of the Bank and IMF’s motivations.
Importantly, and coming back to the point at the start of this piece, the Ukrainian people have been left out of considerations on ending fossil fuel subsidies. By 2021, Ukrainians were paying the same rates for gas as European customers, despite having far smaller wages, insecure work, and extensive difficulties from living under harsh conflict. Thus, conflict-affected Ukrainians were impoverished, indebted, or otherwise insecure because of the cessation of gas subsidies, with insufficient and ineffective social support unable to step into the gap.
The field of political economy must urgently address ecological concerns and the rapid decarbonization of energy sources. However, as I hope to show in my paper, understanding and disrupting the realities and relations behind the use of energy is vital to ensure the most vulnerable and exploited are not only not left behind in energy transformation, but included in the democratic control of energy sources today and tomorrow. Thankfully, the field in recent years has begun to address climate change and the renewable energy transition in the context of challenging capitalist social relations that bred ideologies of cancerous economic growth, rampant inequality, racial discrimination, and de-democratization that all determined the climate crisis in the first place. Finally, critical feminist political economy research is vital in this task, which can advance the possibilities for energy equality, democratic control of resources, and peace.
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