Energy Nationalism: Constructions and Contestations

The rise of populism across Europe is widely acknowledged. This change in the political land-scape may have an impact on climate and environmental politics as well as the politics of energy transition (Fraune and Knodt 2018). One common theme of many populist parties is scrapping of renewable energy subsidies and support of coal and nuclear industry. The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, for example, is averse to the transition to renewable energy that it sees as raising energy prices, ruining landscapes and jeopardizing grid stability (AfD 2017), while the UK Independence Party (UKIP) will “seek to rejuvenate the UK’s coal industry” and supports research into shale gas (UKIP 2019). And yet while it may be tempting to decry populist parties as singularly hostile to a transition to more sustainable energy, this could be oversimplified depic-tion. For, another ‘populist’ trend is the demand for nationalization of the energy sector and the accountability of corporations seen as exploitative. This paper starts from the premise that it a useful way to approach the energy policies of populist parties is through an analysis of the discourse of what is called here ‘energy nationalism’. Energy nationalism is characterized by three themes: (1) Energy Independence: An emphasis on ‘energy independence’ or ‘sovereignty’ and a rejec-tion of reliance on foreign energy sectors. For example, UKIP claimed that Brexit would “allow the UK to set its own future energy policy” (2) National Imaginaries: The nation is an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1983) that exists precisely because it can be imagined and identified. In energy nationalism not only are resources and technologies portrayed as belonging to ‘the nation’, but ‘the nation’ is itself discursive con-structed. (3) Anthropocentric Dualism: Sources of energy (coal mines, water) are constructed as resources that are commonly owned. Here the constructed equality between members of a nation relies upon an anthropocentric dualism not only between us/them but also between human/nature. Using discourse analysis, this paper assesses the manifestos, speeches and policy documents of three European populist parties and traces these three themes. Drawing on research on ‘resource nationalism’ (Koch and Perreault 2019) and delineating a picture of the distinct constructions of the discourse of energy nationalism, it considers the implications for energy transition and asks whether energy nationalism might be said to have a ‘janus-face’ (Machin 2015).