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100			_aHornborg, Alf _949734
245			_aHas Cuba exposed the myth of “free” solar power? Energy, space, and justice /
260			_bSage, _c2019.
300			_aVol 2, issue 4, 2019 : (989-1008 p.).
520			_aGiven the many problems with fossil energy, the fact that solar energy still only constitutes an insignificant fraction of global energy use requires explanation. The most common explanation is that multinational corporations with vested interests in fossil fuels have been actively preventing the development of solar energy technologies. But this explanation is difficult to apply to the case of Cuba. This article takes Cuban energy policy since the 1990s as a starting point to understand the sociometabolic prerequisites of a renewable energy transition. In 2014, Cuba embarked on a new renewable energy strategy while 95% of the island’s electricity was still generated from petroleum products. To explain Cuba’s halting renewable energy transition, we demonstrate that modern energy technologies are always embedded in global flows of resources and processes of capital accumulation. The requisite investments of capital and labor in energy technology represent substantial, indirect land requirements beyond the space occupied by the technological infrastructure itself. The theoretical argument is that energy technologies should be perceived not simply as local, politically neutral accomplishments of engineering but as sociometabolic displacement strategies, appropriating space from elsewhere. From an interdisciplinary perspective, this means that assessments of a technology’s “power density” also need to consider the spatial demands of the global economic context that makes the technology feasible. The Cuban case illustrates how visions of a renewable energy transition in both mainstream and Marxist thought will need to be based on a radically transformed ontology of technology attentive to global political economy and energy justice. Ultimately, the global anticipation of a transition to renewable energy implicates illusory assumptions about “technology” that have been taken for granted since the Industrial Revolution.
650			_aSolar energy, _948680
650			_arenewable energy transition, _949735
650			_a power density, _949736
650			_a technology, _949737
650			_aenergy justice, _949738
650			_aCuba, _949739
700			_aCederlöf, Gustav _949740
700			_aRoos, Andreas _949741
773	0		_012446 _916479 _dLondon: Sage Publication Ltd, 2019. _tEnvironment and Planning E: Nature and Space/ _x 25148486
856			_uhttps://doi.org/10.1177/2514848619863607
942			_2ddc _cART
999			_c12505 _d12505