Race and empire in our energy system: a black history month special

How do race and the legacies of empire continue to impact the energy transition?

For black history month our host, Cambridge Fellow and former government advisor Sulaiman Ilyas-Jarrett, looks at the ways that race and empire still impact our energy transition: including ‘energy apartheid’ in South Africa, the legacy of segregation on the Texas grid, and the role of slavery and empire in the early industrial revolution.

Internationally he looks at the imperial roots of European oil and gas companies like Shell, BP and Total Energies, as well as the legacy of colonialism in cementing the resource curse that so many Sub-Saharan African countries face, from Congo, Angola, Nigeria and elsewhere.

The impact of these histories continue to shape our energy systems, and it is important not to repeat these mistakes as we move to a fairer, renewables based energy system.

Academic sources cited in this episode:

Energy Racism Report: The Electricity Crisis and the WorkingClass in South Africa. University of Johannesburg. Maggott, Terri, Siphiwe Mbatha , Claire Ceruti, Lydia Moyo , Alice Mporo , Trevor Ngwane , Cleopatra Shezi , and Luke Sinwell .  Accessed November 30, 2022. https://www.uj.ac.za/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/energy-racism-csrp-web.pdf

The 2021 Texas Power Crisis: distribution, duration, anddisparities, Flores NM, McBrien H, Do V, Kiang MV, Schlegelmilch J, Casey JA.. J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol. 2023 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9851928/

Race and energy poverty: Evidence from African-Americanhouseholds, Eyup Dogan, Mara Madaleno, Roula Inglesi-Lotz, Dilvin Taskin; Energy Economics (2022). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0140988322000883

Associations between air pollution and socioeconomiccharacteristics, ethnicity and age profile of neighbourhoods in England and the Netherlands. Fecht D, Fischer P, Fortunato L, Hoek G, de Hoogh K, Marra M, Kruize H, Vienneau D, Beelen R, Hansell AEnviron Pollut. 2015https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25622242/

‘Oil will set us free’: the hydrocarbon industry and theAlgerian decolonization process’, Marta Musso, Britain, France and the Decolonization of Africa: Future Imperfect?, 2017.https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1mtz521.8?seq=3

Beyond Petrostates: The burning need to cut oildependence in the energy transition, Mike Coffin and Andrew Grant. 2021.https://carbontracker.org/reports/petrostates-energy-transition-report/

Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century, HelenThompson (2022).