Conversations in Conflict Studies: Bruce Baigrie

Accumulation by Generation: Electricity and the Power Bloc in Mexico and South Africa

This conversation will share insights from Bruce's research which focuses on the conditions that enable or constrain power-sector investment in the context of the clean energy transition. The current market-led transition turns on the deployment of solar and wind—renewables—which are overwhelmingly the purview of the private sector. In many cases the deployment of private renewables runs against a public utility. These utilities are expected to move out of the way, but they rarely go down without a fight.

In a historical-comparative analysis of Mexico and South Africa, resistance to privatization comes from unexpected avenues and I show that what determines power-sector privatization is less a matter of policies and capacities than of whether privatization aligns with or threatens the dominant material interests. Mexico and South Africa pose a series of problems for the status quo of decarbonization through privatization. On the other hand, they also raise insights for a public transition pathway which, although freed from the requirement of private profitability, faces challenges of its own.

Bruce Baigrie is a Ph.D. in the Geography and the Environment Department.