Low-carbon histories for zero-carbon futures

Climate crisis has made the transition from carbon-rich to low-carbon energy systems an existential necessity for the future of our planet. This article sets out how greater attention to low-carbon energy history, currently a neglected component of modern energy development, should comprise an essential part of building a zero-carbon future. We argue for the usefulness of low-carbon as a capacious term that foregrounds the historic and ongoing relationality between low- and high-carbon energy, and set out the ways this has shaped energy infrastructures, practices, and imaginaries through the twentieth century to the present. We outline a range of analytics—materiality, scaling, community—around which critical understandings of low-carbon energy can be gained. And we show that decarbonization, while urgent, does not have to be speculative: the historical examples provided here offer valuable insights into the social and spatial impacts and temporal challenges of introducing new energy infrastructure and decommissioning old that can, and should, be paid more attention.