The Divided Scales of Energy Transition: Discourses and devices of energy market-making in Chile

Abstract

Chile’s energy transition pathway has involved complex processes at multiple scalar entry points, with global investors, the central state, and the subnational state all playing distinct and intertwined roles. Offering a window into a country’s journey through a divided energy transition, this thesis aims to demonstrate how relationships across scales are critical to understanding energy market-making. Aiming to both support and advance scholarly approaches that shine a light on overlooked dimensions of climate governance, the thesis’ contribution is simultaneously methodological and conceptual. The thesis explores these dynamics at the regional, national, and local scales, as well as alignments and divisions between them, through interviews and participant observation conducted in Chile, as well as document analysis and collection of tender data. Discourses and devices used across these scales uncover distinct and often contrasting visions of energy transition. At the regional scale of Latin America, an analysis of renewable energy indexes reveals a dual discourse of spectacle and safety meant to allure investors. At the national scale of Chile, the central state’s tender to procure generation plants reduces energy systems to a standardized framing that is friendly to multinational companies and binds investors and the central state together over time. And at the subnational scale in Renca, the concept of dispositif is employed to identify the extent to which an entrepreneurial local government has the capacity to implement its distinct vision of energy transition. While Renca attempts to center energy poverty alongside investability, the disciplinary nature of the pathway that global financial actors and the central state are advancing stifles this potential disruption. These findings demonstrate the constraints of incorporating locally derived visions into broader energy pathways, and the value of adopting a multi-scalar approach to understand these dynamics.