Managing decline: Devaluation and just transition at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant

IF 4.6 1区社会学 Q1 ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Environment and Planning A-Economy and Space Pub Date : 2023-05-09 DOI:10.1177/0308518x231167865

Sara Nelson, M. Ramana

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

This paper examines the shifting fortunes of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in California to better understand how asset owners are dealing with an increasingly-significant problem in changing energy landscapes: the devaluation of large fixed capital assets. In 2016, Pacific Gas and Electric Company announced a Joint Proposal to retire the Diablo Canyon plant by 2025, the result of a negotiated compromise with labor unions, environmental and community groups. Heralded by many commentators as a model for “just transitions” in the energy sector, this agreement has lately been called into question as new subsidies and political coalitions have emerged to support for the plant's continued operation. This paper investigates the political and economic conditions for the Joint Proposal as an example of “negotiated devaluation,” aiming to understand why and how this strategy took shape, and what lessons it offers for other transition processes. Linking literatures on just transitions and devaluation in the energy sector, we show how negotiated devaluation may offer an emerging strategy for owners of energy assets to manage decline in a changing energy landscape. The case also demonstrates the political contingency of these coalitions and the transitions they subtend, and the limited dimensions of justice that might be affirmed in them.

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管理衰落:Diablo Canyon核电站的贬值与转型

本文考察了加利福尼亚州迪亚波罗峡谷核电站的命运变化，以更好地了解资产所有者如何应对不断变化的能源格局中日益重要的问题:大型固定资本资产的贬值。2016年，太平洋天然气和电力公司宣布了一项联合提案，计划在2025年之前关闭Diablo Canyon工厂，这是与工会、环境和社区团体谈判妥协的结果。该协议曾被许多评论人士誉为能源领域“公正转型”的典范，但最近却受到质疑，因为支持该电厂继续运营的新补贴和政治联盟纷纷出现。本文以“协商贬值”为例，研究了联合提议的政治和经济条件，旨在了解这一战略形成的原因和方式，以及它为其他过渡进程提供的经验教训。我们将有关能源部门转型和贬值的文献联系起来，展示了协商贬值如何为能源资产所有者提供一种新兴战略，以应对不断变化的能源格局中的衰退。这个案例还展示了这些联盟的政治偶然性及其所伴随的过渡，以及可能在其中得到肯定的正义的有限维度。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Environment and Planning A-Economy and Space Multiple-

CiteScore

9.50

自引率

9.50%

发文量

100

期刊介绍： Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space is a pluralist and heterodox journal of economic research, principally concerned with questions of urban and regional restructuring, globalization, inequality, and uneven development. International in outlook and interdisciplinary in spirit, the journal is positioned at the forefront of theoretical and methodological innovation, welcoming substantive and empirical contributions that probe and problematize significant issues of economic, social, and political concern, especially where these advance new approaches. The horizons of Economy and Space are wide, but themes of recurrent concern for the journal include: global production and consumption networks; urban policy and politics; race, gender, and class; economies of technology, information and knowledge; money, banking, and finance; migration and mobility; resource production and distribution; and land, housing, labor, and commodity markets. To these ends, Economy and Space values a diverse array of theories, methods, and approaches, especially where these engage with research traditions, evolving debates, and new directions in urban and regional studies, in human geography, and in allied fields such as socioeconomics and the various traditions of political economy.