The Renewable Normal

The Renewable Normal confronts the aesthetic, affective, and political dimensions of the transition to renewable energy. Written by the After Oil Collective, the book examines how renewable energy is being marshaled to sustain existing systems of inequality and exploitation under a banner of techno-optimism and green growth. It introduces the concept of the “renewable normal” to describe a regime of energy transition that promises transformation but delivers continuity, repackaging fossil-fueled modernity in a low-carbon disguise. Over four chapters, the volume explores how this regime captures hopes for climate solutions while closing down the very possibilities it appears to open. Rather than offering prescriptive solutions or utopian blueprints, The Renewable Normal urges a disposition to readiness: recognizing openings in the present, embracing the unruly rhythms of renewable life, and struggling collectively for transformative change.

At stake is a call to think and act beyond the limits of the current regimes of renewability in support of justice, freedom, and the renewal of collective existence. Recognizing that climate crisis demands collective labor, The Renewable Normal aims to encourage new forms of inquiry in the challenges involved in energetic and social renewal as a genuinely transformative possibility.

After Oil Collective is a composite and collaborative assemblage, fluid in membership, that interrogates the social and cultural politics of energy use in the context of climate change and energy transition.