Dr. David Hughes
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
Professor of Anthropology
Who owns wind and sunlight? Property on the renewable resources frontier
Abstract: Institutions formed around dense, compact energy may not suit the dispersed vastness of sunlight and its immediate derivatives. In Spain, for instance, private landowners and corporations have recently appropriated wind, provoking rural protest powerful enough to slow the energy transition. In the US, the problem lies in cities, where owners of roofs and parking lots waste photons by the terawatt. Both cases present the same dilemma: how shall capitalist societies avail of renewables in a fashion that is both efficient and fa...