Power plants : Bioenergy, vegetal labour and the politics of productivity

Power Plants exposes the underappreciated stakes of an expanding global bioenergy sector. As the pursuit of net zero climate targets comes to rely heavily on the industrial burning of crops and trees, this book argues that a closer attention to plants could yet foster energy futures concerned not with growth, but human satisfaction and wellbeing. -- .

Power Plants offers an unflinching assessment of society’s underappreciated but growing addiction to the industrial burning of crops and trees for energy. As vehicles increasingly run on fuels made from sugarcane and oil-palm, wood pellets replace coal, and scientists rush to engineer crops to produce renewable jet fuel, this book blows apart bioenergy’s reputation as a simple, benign substitute for fossil fuels. Scrutinising modern bioenergy systems in the UK, Europe and United States, Power Plants shows how vegetal lifeforms are being enrolled to reinforce energy cultures centred around logics of efficiency, productivity and economic growth at all costs. Nonetheless, the book insists that a closer attention to plants could yet provoke a rethink of the social and economic purposes of all kinds of energy, with radical implications for ideas about growth, waste, prosperity and even pleasure. -- .