Turning Brownfields into Brightfields

The reuse of abandoned late-industrial sites for renewable energy projects has emerged as a promising strategy for decarbonization and environmental justice in a time of climate emergency. Although challenged by the roll-back of renewable energy policies in the United States, governments and companies frame the use of “unproductive” lands for solar and wind power development as viable solutions to problems of land use, economic decline, climate change, and the demands for energy transition. While the vast majority of existing research instrumentally addresses brownfield redevelopment, project siting challenges, and community acceptance, our historically and ethnographically informed approach seeks to reconcile their toxic legacies and contested valuation techniques with alternative practices of repair that link energy investment to recuperation of damaged lands and burdened communities. The article cautions against energy transition practices that continue patterns of coloniality and capitalist extractivism and gestures toward alternative visions of ecological relations and transformation

Brownfield · Energy transition · Environmental justice · Investment (military · Redevelopment · Renewable energy · Reuse · Vision · Wind power · Environmental Justice and Health Disparities · Mining and Resource Management · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance