The Colonial Myth of Clean Energy

The concept of “clean” energy offers a promise of salvation without a requirement to repent of the sins of unequal consumption. Yet “clean” energy is deeply entangled with fossil fuel extraction, frequently produced by the same dirty corporations. The fetishization of clean energy relies on an assumption that technology and science will save us and our planet. This erases the ways “clean” energy remains an extractive, colonial project. The promised salvation of carbon-free energy sources perpetuates environmental injustice, inequality, and colonialist white saviorism. “Clean” energy needs to be understood as a religious belief and practice to grapple with both the mythological and material impacts energy fetishization.

In 2009 I was designing pressure vessels for a contractor providing equipment and services for oil field applications. A rumor with the power of myth swept the oil field claiming that British Petroleum had become the world’s largest investor in solar panels. It was a rumor I have not substantiated and yet big oil has spent billions of dollars on refining a green image and it was certainly true that several large oil companies made a seismic shift to increasing their bottom lines by switching from pneumatic controls run off methane to electric controls run off solar systems to operate wells. This same contractor also built pressure vessels for Los Alamos National Laboratory. Last week’s breaking 2024 news is that soaring uranium prices now make it profitable to reopen shuttered uranium mines across the western United States. Historically uranium mines have been owned and/or operated by the same corporations mining fossil fuels. They see uranium as a “clean,” carbon free energy source that increases the bottom line and diversifies company portfolios, keeping stock prices up. Solar, nuclear, and fossil fuel industries are one, singular energy industry.

The over-valuation of technical solutions to save us from climate change while maintaining consumptive lifestyles depends on a fetishization of science. I look at popular culture, news media, and social media representations of scientists and science in investigating how these representations operate to create a stereotype of the scientist as a god and science as a religion in which salvation comes through belief in technology and participation in particular practices. One of the primary sources I use is the TV show *Manhattan* which presents itself as a conjoining of historical and science fiction (heavy on the fiction) and provides a lens for how mid-20th century scientific projects are remembered through the refractions of contemporary neoliberal multiculturalism. Science is depicted as solving existential threats while replacing religion. Similarly, current news media tout things like carbon capture and climate engineering as technical solutions to impending extinction. Another set of sources is the proliferation of environmentalist and anti-anti-vax memes which make the claim “I believe in science” as a statement of individual identity-making in opposition to beliefs framed as irrational.

“Clean” energy remains embedded in colonial extraction through mining, pollution, and unacknowledged environmental harm. And it is often still eternally dirty, as there are no methods for safely storing or disposing of nuclear waste. I am not saying that we should dismiss efforts to build the battery infrastructure for switching from gas to electric but that we must be aware of things like the colonial structures that outsource the precious metal mines used to build these batteries. Another example is the construction of solar projects on tribal land without input from the most impacted communities. The structures of clean energy are at least as embedded in colonial violence as the structures of fossil fuel energy.

Fetishizing “clean” energy and turning to it for salvation from climate catastrophe erases how dirty many of the non-carbon energy sources really are and how they perpetuate colonial structures of extraction and pollution. By turning to nuclear and hydro power or carbon capture and climate engineering we over-value technical solutions while undervaluing both the lives of colonized peoples and our own consumptive lifeways. These saviors promise the freedom to keep sinning without consequences. For now, I consider “clean” energy a mythology although it could be considered a theology similar to analysis of competing oil theologies (Dochuk 2019). I argue that understanding “clean” energy as a fetish allows for an analysis of why it has such persuasive mythology despite dubious material impacts.

Perhaps nothing is better suited to grappling with the interplay between myth and material relationships than religious studies. Further inquiry is needed into how practices are perpetuated by the myth of “clean” energy and the belief in technology to save us. I posit that examining “clean” energy as an extractive practice hiding behind claims of salvation could allow for new approaches to discussing, and living through, climate change. Recent scholarship which investigates religion itself as an object of consumption (Lofton, Crockford, Arjana, Seales, etc.) could be a particularly useful conversation to have in addressing how “clean” energy perpetuates notions of ethical consumption.

In investigating “clean” energy as connected with fossil fuel energy I do not mean to suggest that we should abandon efforts to reduce climate changing emissions. It may be fair to think of different energy sources as similar to different sects of one religion. As many scholars have discussed, there is no secularism untainted by specific religious formations. Perhaps our relationship with energy has much in common with secularisms’ relationships with religion: there is no clear border we can cross to be outside of the consumption of energy. What we can do is to challenge the pretense that there are such borders and consider how border making is rooted in colonial administration. “Clean” energy remains part of the energy industry, continues long-standing colonial extractive structures, and operates as a fetish in providing a promise of salvation through consumption.