Territorial Justice and the Energy Transition — New Bloom Magazine
I have published a feature article in New Bloom Magazine, a Taiwanese-American journal specializing in social movements and politics in the Asia-Pacific, titled Decarbonizing With Whom? Territorial Justice and the Energy Transition in France and Taiwan.
The article opens with a striking set of figures: France generates electricity that is 95.2% low-carbon (19.6 g CO₂/kWh), while Taiwan remains 83% dependent on fossil fuels. But beyond these technical benchmarks, the central question I explore is one of governance — how decisions are made, and how their effects are distributed across territories.
I compare the mechanisms for compensating and involving local communities in both countries: citizen-owned power plants, energy cooperatives, and consultation frameworks with indigenous, coastal, and rural populations. The challenge is not simply to decarbonize, but to do so with the people affected — not in spite of them.
The article concludes by identifying avenues for bilateral cooperation between France and Taiwan on these issues, in a spirit of shared learning between two democracies facing structurally different yet politically comparable energy challenges.