The Embodied Political Ecology of Renewable Energy: Tracing Socio-Ecological Impacts of Solar PV and Li-Batteries

The rapid global transition to renewable energy (RE) to mitigate climate change is leading states to compete to secure renewable energy including solar photovoltaic (PV) and lithium ion batteries. Yet these technologies also evidence significant socio-ecological impacts throughout their life cycle, which raises questions of sustainability and justice. In this paper we introduce and theorize the ‘embodied political ecology’ of solar PV and Li batteries as commodities that contribute to a range of impacts, from toxic waste to forced labor. In doing so, we identify the negative impacts of RE according to life-cycle analysis (LCA) and non-LCA studies, including the social science literature on global energy supply chains. This provides a more comprehensive means of understanding the full impacts of producing RE as commodities for a global market than is evident in the literature to date. We then situate the embodied political ecology of RE within their global supply chains, which underscores the increasing market concentration of China and Chinese companies in processing and manufacturing. This reveals the need for greater and more transparent sustainability and justice in Chinese governance at this stage of the supply chain, while improved governance is needed throughout the global supply chain to minimize solar RE’s embodied political ecology.