Caring for technologies, caring for Country

Care is an emerging theoretical tool supporting analysis of socioecological equity impacts as energy systems are transformed to support more sustainable futures. Derived from feminist critiques of rationalist, market-led approaches, energy scholars use care to draw attention to the matters of care that are counted into energy system transitions and the care labour required to realise these transitions. Less attention has been applied to non-Western concepts of care and how they might provide alternative futures through energy. This paper draws on Tronto’s (2013) phases of care framework to investigate how care shapes, flows through and is enabled by renewable energy programs in remote Indigenous communities in Australia. Using data collected through multi-sited project ethnography, this analysis considers how care is defined and built into energy program design and implementation. Interrogating these care logics illustrates the importance of prioritising sociocultural alongside technical forms of care. Understanding energy in this way offers insights into the role of energy in underpinning Indigenous futures, by supporting Indigenous ontological imperatives to exist in and care for Country, as well as insights into what it means to care at scale with energy through sustainability transitions. • Uses Tronto’s (2013) phases of care framework to draw out technical and social forms of care for and through energy systems. • Demonstrates possibilities for care at scale in sociotechnical systems underpinned by trust and relationality. • Illustrates engineering and policy approaches to care for technology as an expression of care for Indigenous futures. • Foregrounds Indigenous and feminist ideas of care as alternative foundations for energy transitions.