ELSEWHERES OF THE UNBUILT: The Global Effects of Transnational Energy Infrastructure Projects

Abstract

Pipelines and refineries, hydropower dams, and solar and wind power projects feeding into emerging transnational energy networks make up the thrust of a new push for infrastructural expansion in the global South. This article argues that understanding the effects of this expansion requires attending to the multiple elsewheres of transnational energy projects in various states of realization. By this we mean accounting for the ways in which these projects are financed, planned, contested, contracted, built, transformed and withheld at multiple, sometimes connected and sometimes disparate, sites across the globe. Focusing on the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), the Central American Electric Interconnection System (SIEPAC) and the Mediterranean Electricity Ring (MedRing), our research shows that such projects are ‘global’ not only in their physical reach and forging of connections between disparate and expansive geographies, but also in the ways they bring into being new, transnational or global publics.