Scrutinising commodity hype in imaginaries of the Swedish green steel transition
de Leeuw, Georgia LU and Vogl, Valentin LU
(2024)
In Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space
- Abstract
- The technological push for hydrogen-based steel production has become a flagship project of the Swedish state for advancing its global environmental leadership and becoming the world's first fossil free welfare state. The new production process has the potential to drastically cut emissions in a heavy polluting industry. The plans also entail a drastic upscale in steel production, energy and iron ore consumption and risk increasing existing pressures on Indigenous Sami land, local communities, and biodiversity. This article sets out to investigate the frontier-making function of green steel imaginaries to contribute to debates on sacrificed spaces of extraction for green commodity demand. The article speaks to a call for a critical turn in... (More)
- The technological push for hydrogen-based steel production has become a flagship project of the Swedish state for advancing its global environmental leadership and becoming the world's first fossil free welfare state. The new production process has the potential to drastically cut emissions in a heavy polluting industry. The plans also entail a drastic upscale in steel production, energy and iron ore consumption and risk increasing existing pressures on Indigenous Sami land, local communities, and biodiversity. This article sets out to investigate the frontier-making function of green steel imaginaries to contribute to debates on sacrificed spaces of extraction for green commodity demand. The article speaks to a call for a critical turn in sustainability transitions literature by introducing the concept of hype to scrutinise the material consequences of growth-based green transition imaginaries. This article builds on a narrative analysis of government, industry, and company actors’ visions of a green steel future. The analysis illustrates how sociotechnical imaginaries are constructed to enable particular industrial futures over other green transition pathways. We show that the sociotechnical imaginary of green steel, fuelled through hype, serves to advance the new commodity and growth of the industry while effectively cancelling out democratic nuance and non-extractive alternatives. The findings illustrate the importance of pluralising green imaginaries to ensure inclusive transition pathways and to nuance and discursively dismantle the hype of green transitions that fail to break with the growth paradigm. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/523edce5-27ef-4fca-8d98-c0f8ab1939fb
- author
- de Leeuw, Georgia
LU
and Vogl, Valentin
LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2024-03-14
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- epub
- subject
- keywords
- frontier, commodity, green steel, sociotechnical imaginaries, green transition, Sweden, Sapmi
- in
- Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space
- publisher
- SAGE Publications
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:85187899724
- ISSN
- 2514-8494
- DOI
- 10.1177/25148486241238398
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 523edce5-27ef-4fca-8d98-c0f8ab1939fb
- date added to LUP
- 2024-03-15 10:58:01
- date last changed
- 2024-03-28 04:01:41
@article{523edce5-27ef-4fca-8d98-c0f8ab1939fb,
abstract = {{The technological push for hydrogen-based steel production has become a flagship project of the Swedish state for advancing its global environmental leadership and becoming the world's first fossil free welfare state. The new production process has the potential to drastically cut emissions in a heavy polluting industry. The plans also entail a drastic upscale in steel production, energy and iron ore consumption and risk increasing existing pressures on Indigenous Sami land, local communities, and biodiversity. This article sets out to investigate the frontier-making function of green steel imaginaries to contribute to debates on sacrificed spaces of extraction for green commodity demand. The article speaks to a call for a critical turn in sustainability transitions literature by introducing the concept of hype to scrutinise the material consequences of growth-based green transition imaginaries. This article builds on a narrative analysis of government, industry, and company actors’ visions of a green steel future. The analysis illustrates how sociotechnical imaginaries are constructed to enable particular industrial futures over other green transition pathways. We show that the sociotechnical imaginary of green steel, fuelled through hype, serves to advance the new commodity and growth of the industry while effectively cancelling out democratic nuance and non-extractive alternatives. The findings illustrate the importance of pluralising green imaginaries to ensure inclusive transition pathways and to nuance and discursively dismantle the hype of green transitions that fail to break with the growth paradigm.}},
author = {{de Leeuw, Georgia and Vogl, Valentin}},
issn = {{2514-8494}},
keywords = {{frontier; commodity; green steel; sociotechnical imaginaries; green transition; Sweden; Sapmi}},
language = {{eng}},
month = {{03}},
publisher = {{SAGE Publications}},
series = {{Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space}},
title = {{Scrutinising commodity hype in imaginaries of the Swedish green steel transition}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/25148486241238398}},
doi = {{10.1177/25148486241238398}},
year = {{2024}},
}