Emerging geographies of decarbonization beyond North and South: lithium and green hydrogen in Chile and Spain (DecarboGraphies)

Current transitions to a low-carbon energy future increase the need for critical raw materials (CRM), such as lithium, and clean energy carriers, such as green hydrogen (GH2). In the case of lithium, this is due to its use in lithium-ion batteries and thus in e-mobility. Hydrogen, in turn, offers many possibilities for emission-free combustion and a wide range of possible applications in industrial processes, buildings and transport. This is why, according to the European Commission (EC), the European demand for lithium is expected to increase seven-fold by 2050. The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) expects that hydrogen and its derivatives will account for 12% of final energy consumption by 2050. Alongside the climate crisis and the international community’s commitment to the 2°C target set out in the Paris Agreement, both lithium and GH2 are also gaining momentum on account of current geopolitical tensions. The war in Ukraine and an increasingly multipolar world order have exposed Europe's dependence on imports of CRMs and energy and brought new urgency to questions of supply security. New CRM mining and green hydrogen projects in the global South, needed as part of the European Green Deal, have recently been discussed by social scientists in terms of green colonialism, green extractivism and green sacrifice zones. However, against the backdrop of the current geopolitical shifts, onshoring and nearshoring as well as the re-regionalization of CRM extraction have gained relevance. At the same time, new transnational interdependencies and relationships are emerging, and spaces of production increasingly become spaces of prosumption. New (spatial) categories are therefore needed to understand these changes in the context of decarbonization beyond North and South, as well as to analyze the territorial conflicts that accompany these shifts. Breaking down the North-South dichotomy, DecarboGraphies hence examines two sectors – lithium and hydrogen – in Chile and Spain and introduces the notion of ‘geographies of decarbonization’, asking for the emerging socio-spatial configurations from a multiscalar perspective.

Duration: 1.5 years

Project Volume: 36,184.80€

Funding Agency: Austrian Science Fund and Austrian Academy of Sciences

Programme: Disruptive Innovation, Early Career Seed Money

Team: Felix Malte Dorn (Principal Investigator)