Marketing Renewable Energy through Geopolitics: Solar Farms in Israel

Abstract

Mounting evidence of the harmful effects of conventional energy resources on human and ecological systems has led to an increased development of renewable energy technologies. Indeed, resources such as wind, solar, and biomass are increasingly lauded as enhancing “energy system flexibility”1 given their untapped potential as “routinely available, indigenous” supplies of energy.2However, renewable energy technology (RET) and services face many barriers to effective implementation. Renewable energy actors must compete with conventional energy powers over land, water, and other natural resources.3 The NIMBY (not in my back yard)4 effect and a lack of consumer knowledge regarding the tangible benefits of renewable energy resources also may hinder RET backing and progress.5 Several studies point toward environmental implications of RET that are frequently downplayed given its eco-friendly gloss, including sizeable land footprints from infrastructural expanses (e.g., solar and wind), air pollution (e.g., biomass and waste burning), water and ecosystem degradation and habitat disruption (e.g., hydroelectric, wind, and geothermal power), and aesthetic degradation from nearly all forms of RET.6Specific supporting conditions, such as institutional and market modifications, help transform established energy economies to include more RET.7 These conditions include new advocacy constituents8 in the form of “technology-specific advocacy coalitions”9: “prime movers” that increase awareness, promote capital investments, afford legitimacy, and diffuse RET.10An increasingly common approach for establishing advocacy coalitions to market RET involves geopolitical benefits. The “Roadmap for EU-Russia Energy Cooperation until 2050,” for example, sees renewable energy as a geopolitical opportunity for energy cooperation that is “mutually beneficial for both sides,” as both Russia and the EU will increase their energy system resiliency through RET exchange.11 Similarly, in politically charged North Africa, RET is considered “geopolitically more promising” given its potential to “promote stronger intra-regional and Euro-Mediterranean cooperation.”12 As a “discursive practice by which intellectuals of statecraft ‘spatialize’ international politics,”13 viewing RET through the geopolitical lens elevates renewable energy to a strategic power position in the energy politics game.14 Despite the acknowledgment that RET may intertwine with geopolitics, academic literature mostly discusses its economic viability, technical feasibility, and environmental merits.15As a result, a gap in the literature remains regarding how (and if at all) geopolitical argumentation is constructed16 for the purpose of marketing renewable energy and by whom, and how such argumentation impacts RET decision-making processes.17 Given that the literature on geopolitics calls for critical analysis of geopolitical discourses,18 coupled with various studies that identify a research gap on how RET discourse coalitions impact renewable energy policies,19 we should critically examine how and why geopolitical abstractions are used to market RET.In this article we argue that the promotion of contested large-scale energy projects opens the door to geopolitical rhetorics and rationales that sidestep some of the opposition to them. We use publicized protocols from various decision-making circles regarding the promotion of solar energy in the Israeli Negev Desert from 2001 to 2012 to trace the use of competing geopolitical considerations for renewable energy goals.Classical geopolitics pertains to “the global balance of power and the future of strategic advantage in an anarchic world.”20 The physical environment and geographical location of a state are thus the principal determinants of a state’s political destiny,21 fueling the assumption that fixed and observable geopolitical realities provide a backdrop on which international politics plays out.22Critical geopolitics emerged from the recognition that classical geopolitics takes existing power structures for granted.23 Critical geopolitics entails careful consideration of ideology and power in the process of policy-making.24 This situates discourse at the forefront of critical geopolitics because the spatial representation of foreign affairs involves numerous ideological representations of “places, peoples, and dramas” by a vast array of actors embedded in power struggles.25The appeal of geopolitics is largely found in its “seductive simplemindedness,” which allows normalizing declarations of world order and reactive policy-making to endure.26 Indeed, through simplified geographical and political representations, a “straightforward explanatory framework” allows for the linkage of disparate issues into clear-cut political benefits and risks.27 This confirms that “geopolitics provides the discursive context for [a] grand strategy” to be created28 by allowing powerful actors to fulfill certain interests over others to maintain existing perspectives.29Natural resources are integral to geopolitics in that they fuel the material notion of power (e.g., economic and military) by their strategic relevance to political systems operating on the basis of resource competition.30Conventional energy resources have long been promoted through geopolitics due to their strategic importance in upholding national interests of prosperity and development.31 Since nations are territorial entities with demarcated borders encapsulating particular natural resources, the presence or lack of energy-fueling resources within national boundaries plays a critical role in a state’s social, military, and economic prowess.32Furthered by a widespread desire for fuel availability, the twentieth century bore witness to an emerging geopolitically charged concept called energy security, which initially called for energy supply reliability for economic growth and development. However, this regularly tied energy development to foreign affairs, which raised the importance for a nation to become energy independent. This implied the need to curtail political, economic, and technological “barriers” that hindered local energy production, effectively placing RET at the forefront for enhancing energy security.33The widespread campaign for energy independence opened the door for geopolitical rhetoric that championed RET as an energy approach free from the vulnerabilities associated with inauspicious, foreign energy abstractions. Klare,34 for one, discusses the need for the US to “reverse the militarization of its dependence on imported energy and ease geopolitical competition with China and Russia over control of foreign resources” so that an enhanced domestic energy economy can be achieved through RET development. Likewise, South Korea promotes RET as a way to reduce the “cycle of volatility” created by foreign energy exports.35 In other words, RET serves as an alternative to the “centralized or totalistic controls” of conventional energy systems because it is produced by local communities in their own back yards.36Tied to this notion of restricting the influence of politically motivated energy disturbances is RET dispersing the spatial balance of power through energy system interconnection and diffusion of services. For instance, a solitary, interconnected power grid in Europe might provide numerous domestic benefits, which could deter political uprisings from outside the EU.37 Similarly, the Mojave Desert and other public lands in the western US are being lauded as a “new energy frontier” capable of providing energy independence through regional infrastructure development and state networking.38RET also enables foreign policy-making through cooperation. In Pakistan, for instance, RET collaboration has facilitated the country’s status as a potential “trade corridor” as South Asia develops “a symbiotic relationship on energy” despite ongoing regional tensions.39 Similarly, in the Czech Republic, the use of RET in satellite settlements is seen as “being packaged…within a narrative that attempts to accommodate the climate change implications” of conventional energy services, thus allowing the country to partially fulfill cooperative renewable energy goals within the greater EU.40 Even Desertec,41 despite its recent dissolution, was initially celebrated as being capable of contributing to regional economic and political stability in North Africa and the Mediterranean by creating win–win scenarios for participating nations.42Although these anecdotal examples demonstrate how RET is justified as an alleged geopolitical benefit, we still lack research on how geopolitical argumentation is constructed43 for the purpose of marketing renewable energy, by whom it is constructed, and how it impacts RET decision-making processes.44 We also do not know if this RET rhetoric is indeed new or is merely an extension of the previous energy geopolitics rhetoric around fossil fuels.Until recent discoveries of offshore natural gas, Israel was thought to lack indigenous supplies of energy, thus being highly dependent on unpredictable, imported resources.45 This perception first formed after the 1973 oil embargo, when Arab members of OPEC raised global oil prices, decreased production amounts, and ultimately boycotted oil distribution to Israel and her allies.To address this scarcity, the 1952 Petroleum Law gave authority to licensed excavators to locate and estimate reserves of oil by sample drillings. However, the intense excavations that followed proved Israel to be extremely barren of fossil fuels.46 In 2009, for instance, only 12 percent of Israel’s energy came from in-country resources.47Israel was (and still is) perceived as an “energy island,” in light of its disconnected energy infrastructure system with neighboring states such as Lebanon and Egypt.48 This geopolitical predicament, coupled with low national power reserves, implies that even a minor malfunction in the electrical system could result in rolling electrical blackouts. In 2002 this occurred when a sharp increase in electricity consumption resulted in nationwide blackouts, costing roughly 700 million NIS to the state economy.49 Such a precarious energy portfolio has not permitted Israel to depend on regional energy resources in the past, effectively resulting in a drive for “indigenous production” and source diversification.50 In 2004, the Israeli Energy Master Plan recognized the need for a new energy reserve, replacing the use of coal with natural gas from Egypt and gas found offshore from Gaza.51 However, this plan was eventually shelved for political reasons.A shift in the Israeli energy mix occurred in the early 2000s, with the discovery of the Yam Titus offshore gas reservoir and the signing of an agreement between Egypt and Israel in 2005 to provide Israel with 25 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas over 15 years via a transboundary gas pipeline.52 By the end of 2010 these new gas resources provided 36 percent of the Israeli energy mix, the rest coming from coal (62 percent) and oil (2 percent).53 However, the pipeline was closed permanently in 2012 following repeated terrorist attacks.54 Also, the development of a Palestinian offshore gas field to serve the Israeli market was delayed due to Israeli geopolitical concerns of becoming dependent on the Palestinians. Consequently, Israel’s energy plan was modified yet again by incorporating more imported resources like coal and oil.55This precarious energy position has steadily driven forward the call for “indigenous production” and source diversification,56 a plea that gained weight with the discovery of offshore natural gas. 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