Futures of the Sun: The Struggle Over Renewable Life (Review)

Imre Szeman’s Futures of the Sun: The Struggle Over Renewable Life, intervenes in the ongoing struggle to establish a collective “common sense” about the global future of energy. Based on his 2022 Leverhulme Lectures at the University of Glasgow but written in a popular style that conveys complex ideas in a clear and accessible way, Szeman’s book interrogates how various actors project competing narratives of the future of energy, each seeking to mold societies in their own image. Szeman maps a renewable energy “common sense”—existing somewhere between the “dominant” and “emergent”—where the inevitability of the end of oil (the “residual”) is taken for granted by everyone from global financial elites to anti-capitalists.

Yet, Szeman shows that the future of energy society is not inevitable. It is, rather, in Stuart Hall’s sense of the phrase, “without guarantees.” The key contradiction is this: powerful organizations strive to preserve the economic, political, and ideological conditions responsible for global climate change, even as they claim to lead us toward a greener future. The central political challenge posed by the book is thus how an internationalist environmental left can pursue a renewable energy future that disrupts—and moves beyond—the status quo of the past and present geopolitical economy rather than affirming and reproducing it.

This challenge invites readers to engage carefully with the book. In the coming months, a variety of scholarly reviews, working in different review genres, will undoubtedly emerge to do just that. The “summary review,” for instance, provides an overview of a book’s main arguments and contributions, highlighting key themes and contextualizing it within the broader field. The “analytical review” describes the book’s content but with the intent to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the argument, noting what the book offers and what it misses in relation to ongoing concerns in the field. The “comparative review” places the book alongside similar works, discussing its distinct contributions or similarities relative to related books. The “interpretive review” might isolate and interrogate a book’s treatment of a specific concept or topic, often linking it to the reviewer’s own research focus. Finally, a “meta-critical review” goes beyond summarizing, analyzing, comparing, or interpreting a book’s content; it instead engages in critique, examining the various assumptions embedded in the theories, methods, and claims the book makes about the world. Review by critique opens new possibilities for thinking within and through the book’s mode of thought.

In this review of Futures of the Sun, I engage the text through a series of thematically connected concepts and questions that emerged as I prepared for the book launch and live Q&A with the author at Another Story Bookshop in Toronto on November 6, 2024. I also include images of my dog-eared copy, with marginalia—scribbled annotations, half-formed reflections, and underlined passages—that capture my real-time responses to the text while reading (and sometimes, my fingers). This approach, which might be called an “immersive question review,” forgoes closure in favor of open-ended probes that offer entry points into the book’s substance, highlighting its key concepts while sharing clusters of questions based on my own interests and curiosities. This genre of review treats the text as a conversation starter—an invitation to further dialogue with the book, the author, and knowledge communities invested in its topic and its political implications. I found the book to be excellent; my questions are not political challenges or indications of what might be missed, but reflections on the thought Futures of the Sun provoked me to ponder.

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Narratives and Common Sense

In the book’s preface, Szeman writes: “The battle over just who owns the energy of the sun is now in the process of being fought out. The practices of energy ownership definitive of the era of fossil fuels are, in all too many cases, quickly being extended to renewables. The ownership which I'm concerned with in this short book isn't the control of renewable energy technologies, sites, systems, or networks by companies or governments; rather, it's about who is trying to lay claim to the narratives guiding our transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, how they are doing so and why and to what ends” (xiii).

‍Who are the key actors scripting, telling, and selling the narratives around global energy transition? What are some of the key narratives taking shape? How might these competing narratives influence our “common sense” about the transition to a renewable future? Is there one narrative that is especially troubling? Is there one dominating the others—becoming a meta-narrative—in making and shaping the energy transition?

The concept of “common sense” is key to Futures of the Sun. Szeman writes, “The notion of common sense is not just a description of an already achieved state—or not only that—but names the ongoing active struggle to establish a norm, perhaps especially in situations in which one does not yet exist. Appeals to ‘common sense’ are a way of bringing people into one’s narrative fold… ‘common sense’ is something that has to be made. Each of the narratives of renewable futures at which I look here makes the case that its views are ‘common sense’ precisely because they are anything but” (xix).

What major “common sense” stories about renewable or solar futures are emerging? How do certain future energy narratives frame themselves as “common sense”? What problems arise when the public accepts “common sense” narratives about renewable futures at face value? Which assumptions embedded in these “common sense” narratives should we question most critically?

Nation-States and Nationalisms

Szeman shows how “The nation-state and nationalism has been configured today as a site of climate action” and highlights “strong claims” that continue “to be made about the key role of nation-states in fighting climate change” (23) across the political spectrum. Szeman assesses the works of a wide range of thinkers, from liberal proponents of nation-states and nationalism, like Anatol Lieven, to Left theorists such as Andreas Malm, who advocates for “war communism,” Chantal Mouffe, who argues for a Left national populism, and Fredric Jameson’s (rest in power) idea of a “citizen army.” Each of these thinkers, in their own way, seems to represent a shift back toward the nation-state and nationalism as potential mechanisms for solving the problem of global climate change.

What has made the nation-state and nationalism so appealing as key nodes of climate action across the political spectrum today? Looking back at the heyday of globalization theory in the late 1990s, many imagined a future where nation-states and nationalisms would fade, making way for new cross-border collectives and global climate governance models—what has happened since then to bring nation-states and nationalisms back to the fore? Did nation-states and nationalisms ever really go away? What might be lost if we lean too heavily on nation-state and nationalistic approaches to tackle the global problem of climate change? What are the main challenges and potential drawbacks of reimagining the state as the primary agent in addressing climate change and building future renewable [national] energy communities?

Meta-Entrepreneurs and Green Technologies

Szeman introduces the new and useful concept of the “meta-entrepreneur”—a powerful, largely unchecked corporate climate actor who can bypass the limitations of state power to set agendas and frames, often before policymakers or the public have a chance to engage. These actors exert influence over energy policy without requiring—let alone caring much about—winning public consent through official representative democratic channels. Szeman writes: “As the grand political end product of neoliberalism, meta-entrepreneurs possess powers that states do not...Their powers arise from their ability (sometimes real, sometimes imagined) to make things happen” (28). Szeman argues that meta-entrepreneurial figures like Bill Gates and Elon Musk play an outsized role in writing and making our energy futures. Also, these meta-entrepreneurs preside over corporations with names reminiscent of sci-fi stories, like Microsoft and Tesla, which suggests an almost fantastical quality to their power.

How are these new “meta-entrepreneurs” shaping the global future of energy? What aspects of these meta-entrepreneurial approaches to energy transition are most intriguing—or most worrisome? How does the future energy “common sense” advanced by figures like the liberal Democratic Party-supporting Bill Gates compare to the “common sense” proposed by far-Right tech bros, like the Republican Party and MAGA-supporting Elon Musk?  What are some of the potential dangers of empowering meta-entrepreneurs to lead the global energy transition? How does the meta-entrepreneurial blurring of “sci-fi” with sustainability branding shape public perceptions of the role or efficacy of so-called “green technologies” in global climate action? Has the new configuration of meta-entrepreneurs as the engineers of energy transition made “green techno-solutionism” easier or harder to critique?

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Solar Fetishism

Szeman discusses Andreas Malm’s analysis of social class dynamics in the energy transition from water to coal in Fossil Capital, highlighting the conflicts shaping this shift. Reflecting on this, Szeman writes: “The struggle to adopt solar power isn’t primarily driven by labor issues related to fossil fuel use, partly because of the labor movement's suppression in the neoliberal era. Nor is the shift to solar solely an elite project aimed at ensuring seamless industrial operations. Comparisons between the first and second [energy] transitions reveal more differences than similarities. The forces driving the current energy transition lie elsewhere” (32).

Beyond traditional capital-labor conflicts, what are the major forces driving today’s solar energy transition? How does the transition to solar differ from the historic shift from water to coal? Furthermore, what does “solar fetishism” mean, and what role does it play in the renewable energy transition? 

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Right Wing-Populism

Common sense around renewable energy isn’t only being shaped by proponents, but by opponents, too. Szeman argues the “mess and muddle of contemporary right-wing reactions” globally plays a role in shaping “common sense around energy transition” by opposing the end of oil (55). Focusing on Canada, particularly Alberta, Szeman discusses how far-right groups, parties, politicians, and governments are defining a national energy narrative around oil extraction rather than renewable energy. While “the era of oil is over” (60), the Alberta oil industry continues to legitimize oil sands extraction under “ostensibly environmental goals,” achieving “net zero not by reducing or eliminating extraction but by using new technologies, such as carbon capture and storage” (61). Furthermore, Canadian right-wing populism, backed by fossil fuel industries, lobby groups, and front-groups, links its definition of the national self not only to race and sexuality but also to “differences with respect to energy resources” (64). Fossil fuels have thus shaped “right-wing notions of tradition,” where “to do anything about climate change is to be both anti-Canadian and dangerously opposed to tradition”(70-1).

Are there ways proponents of energy transition could leverage these divisions within the “mess and muddle” of the far right? How have traditions around fossil fuels become so deeply ingrained in society and what might be necessary to disrupt this tradition in support of the new energy transition? Given fossil fuels are a central to far-right imaginings and narratives of Canadian national identity, is it possible—and desirable—to reimagine and create new narratives of Canadian national identity in a way that aligns more closely with renewable energy?

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What’s To Be Done?

In the book’s conclusion, Szeman writes, “To the repeated affirmation of the capacities of nations and nationalisms to address climate change by working together as a global collective of good liberal states, we should insist that a just energy transition will happen only through the creation of new international structures and systems truly committed to addressing climate change” (70) even as “No such international structure exists at present in relation to energy or the environment, and one doesn’t seem to be waiting in the wings” (70).

What are the main barriers to creating these new global or international structures? Could any existing global institutions be reformed, or would new ones need to be built from scratch? And “from below”? “Above”? “In-between”? What political agent will build this new structure?

Szeman argues that “we need to articulate the desirability and necessity of a commons” to meta-entrepreneurs and other powerful actors operating independently of state oversight and control (71). He adds that ‘resource communing in a post-oil world would put pressure on the continued legitimacy of the ‘tragedy of the commons,’ a narrative that continues to be used to assert the historical necessity of property and capitalism.”(72). To the question, “Who owns the sun?”, Szeman declares “Everyone! Anyone who says otherwise must be challenged on the strongest terms possible” (73). Szeman challenges the notion of the “tragedy of the commons” as an inevitability.

How might renewable energy—solar power!—counter the “tragedy of the commons” argument? What kind of politics would be needed to ensure that access to solar energy is common rather than becoming yet another site of corporate control, commodification and accumulation?  How could a commons-based resource model apply to other renewable energies, like wind? Could a similar “everyone owns” approach work across these energy forms as well?

Yet, simply presenting scientific facts may be insufficient to countering climate denial, delay, and distraction. Szeman suggests that appeals to “tradition” combined with new “myths” could prove useful to catalyzing collective climate action toward a renewable energy future. He proposes the idea of battling Big Oil, petro-populist nation-states, and the far right on the terrain of “tradition,” noting how Raymond Williams recognized tradition as the most powerful mechanism of social incorporation. “Conceding tradition to the status quo means forgoing its potential as a powerful political tool to unnerve the powers that be” (75) says Szeman, noting “it is essential for those committed to climate action to make a claim on tradition, even if only as political rhetoric—a means of mythmaking to political ends” (75).

How can “tradition” be mobilized and utilized, put to work, for the renewable energy transition? What types of myths would be most effective in promoting a sense of collective responsibility or urgency to accelerate the renewable energy transition? If “tradition” is just a form, what “traditional” content could be revisited, redefined or reimagined to support the renewable energy transition in a way that resonates mythically with communities and cultures, old, new and emerging?

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The Return of Donald Trump: Disrupting Renewable Energy Futures?

Futures of the Sun was published a few weeks prior to the 2024 re-election of Donald Trump to the US presidency. In his victory speech, Trump declared: “leave the oil to me, we have more liquid gold, oil and gas, than any country in the world, more than Saudi Arabia, more than Russia…We can do things that nobody else is going to be able to do.” How does Donald Trump’s re-election to the U.S. presidency and investment in fossil capitalism affirm or challenge the book’s argument about renewable energy futures becoming entrenched as “common sense”? What are the political implications of the argument given Trump’s energy policy platform, which includes expanding fossil fuel production, deregulating environmental protections, rescinding public funding for clean energy, and withdrawing from the Paris Agreement?

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Notes:

Szeman, Imre. Futures of the Sun: The Struggle Over Renewable Life. University of Minnesota Press, 2024.