Building on insights from ecological economics and philosophy of technology, this book offers a novel, interdisciplinary approach to understand the contradictory nature of Solar photovoltaic (PV) technology.
Solar photovoltaic (PV) technology is rapidly emerging as a cost-effective option in the world economy. However, reports about miserable working conditions, environmentally deleterious mineral extraction and toxic waste dumps corrode the image of a problem-free future based on solar power. Against this backdrop, Andreas Roos explores whether ‘ecologically unequal exchange’ – an asymmetric transfer of labour time and natural resources – is a necessary condition for solar PV development. He demonstrates how the massive increase in solar PV installation over recent years would not have been possible without significant wage/price differences in the world economy - notably between Europe/North America and Asia- and concludes that solar PV development is currently contingent on environmental injustices in the world economy. As a solution, Roos argues that solar technology is best coupled with strategies for degrowth, which allow for a transition away from fossil fuels and towards a socially just and ecologically sustainable future.
This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of solar power, philosophy of technology, and environmental justice.
Author(s): Andreas Roos
Series: Routledge Studies in Environmental Justice
Publisher: Routledge/Earthscan
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 227
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
1 Solar technology at the brink
Relating solar visions to reality
Ecomodernism vs. ecorealism
A note on interdisciplinarity
The structure and contents of this book
2 Earthing philosophy of technology
Does nature matter?
What is technology?
Foundations for a critical ecological philosophy of technology
The technological continuum
Gender, race and ecology in technology
3 The historical context of solar technology
What is a metabolic regime?
The rise of the industrial regime
The acceleration of the industrial regime
Solar power in the new metabolic regime
4 Global asymmetries in the rise of solar power
The solar boom
Immaterial explanations for the boom
Ecologically unequal exchange between Germany and China
The vision and the reality of the solar boom
5 The inherent politics of global solar technology
Questioning solar technology boundaries
Power density and global solar visions
The political ecology of the technological boundary
The vision and the reality of the solar future
6 The world and the solar module
The world in the solar module
The solar module in the world
A critical ecological ontology of solar technology
7 Solutions beyond solar illusions
Realistic envisioning
Alternative solar technology
Alliances for a metabolic counter-regime
Appendix A: International trade volumes and embodied resources in the German–Chinese exchange
Appendix B: Further considerations for calculating "power density extended"
Glossary
References
Index
