Unsettling Energy Transitions: Toward a Critical, Anticapitalist, and Plural Perspective

This article examines the socioecological and justice implications of the rapid discursive global shift toward low-carbon infrastructures as a response to an accelerating civilizatory crisis. While the idea is to reduce fossil fuel dependence and mitigate this planetary crisis, evidence reveals that low-carbon technologies, or so-called renewable energy, are adding to, rather than replacing, existing fossil fuel–based energy systems. Furthermore, low-carbon technologies remain intertwined with fossil fuels, mining, and mineral extraction alongside extensive supply chains that disproportionately impact the Global South, where mineral and land use as well as environmental and social costs are keenly felt. This review highlights the geopolitical reconfigurations prompted by the so-called energy transition while engaging with critical debates surrounding coloniality, justice, and socioecological well-being perspectives embedded within these processes. Through a comprehensive literature review, the article identifies key trends, critiques, and limitations in these debates, emphasizing notable gaps. It advances a critical agenda: to demodernize “energy” by treating it as a contested relation; to reconceptualize justice around territorial self-determination and multiple ways of knowing and living; to treat transitions as conflictual reconfigurations that can intensify extraction; and to prioritize energy autonomy, sufficiency, and convivial infrastructures that reduce dependence. The review maps debates on, identifies gaps in, and outlines research priorities for plural, anticolonial energy transformations.