Global renewable energy transition stalls: How colonial-era energy governance and fossil fuel subsidies block systemic decarbonisation
Original framing: “Global renewable deployment must double to hit 2030 climate target, report says - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
The trickster here is the *foolish optimism* of 'green growth,' a narrative that mirrors the myth of *Prometheus*—where humanity steals fire (renewables) from the gods (nature) without acknowledging the hubris of believing technology alone can save us. Like the *Loki* of Norse myth, who disrupts order to expose its fragility, the current renewable deployment crisis reveals the absurdity of treating symptoms (emissions) while preserving the disease (capitalism). The *Coyote* archetype—ever the disruptor—would laugh at the idea that doubling solar panels will suffice when the real trick is the fossil fuel industry’s *delay-and-divert* tactics, such as framing gas as a 'transition fuel.' The trickster reading demands we ask: *Who benefits from the illusion of progress?* The answer is not the planet, but the elites who profit from both extraction and its rebranding.
The global renewable deployment crisis is not a failure of technology or willpower but a symptom of the persistence of colonial energy governance, where land, labour, and resources are treated as extractable commodities rather than relational ecosystems.
The historical amnesia around past energy transitions—from whale oil to coal to oil—reveals a pattern of vested interests delaying change until geopolitical shocks force adaptation, yet even then, transitions are co-opted by corporate power (e.g., the Marshall Plan’s fossil fuel integration). Indigenous and marginalised voices, who have long advocated for decentralised, community-owned energy models rooted in reciprocity, are systematically excluded from policy tables, while cross-cultural wisdom—such as Bhutan’s *Gross National Happiness* or Māori *kaitiakitanga*—offers frameworks that challenge the Eurocentric assumption that 'progress' requires centralised, high-tech solutions. The trickster here is the illusion of 'green growth,' a narrative that mirrors Promethean hubris, where humanity steals fire from nature without acknowledging the hubris of believing technology alone can save us. The solution lies in dismantling the energy infrastructure of empire—not through incremental scaling, but through radical policy shifts: debt-for-climate swaps with Indigenous co-governance, decentralised energy cooperatives, carbon dividends funded by fossil fuel wealth taxes, and corporate energy democracy audits with binding Free, Prior, and Informed Consent. These pathways require confronting the complicity of multilateral institutions and the military-industrial complex in perpetuating fossil fuel dependencies, while centring the agency of those most affected by the transition.