Abstract
The current efforts to decarbonize electricity production has triggered tensions and conflicts, especially between fossil-fuel and renewable energies power producers to secure or extend their capital accumulation. This paper analyzes the decarbonation struggle in Guadeloupe, a French Carribbean island, and its outcomes on the making and the landing of electricity capital. I analyze electricity capital as a frontier-making and territorialization process : energy power producers compete to control and extract local ressources using coercition and violence on one hand, conducting a political work to legitimize their control on the other hand. This paper first introduce the Guadeloupean fossil fuel energy regime and its underlying moral economy. This « state-led fossil developmentalism » carries a promise of Guadeloupe’s deeper (economic and political) integration into the French national space. Second, it focuses on the decarbonation struggle in Guadeloupe, analyzing the territorialization strategies implemented by incumbents and challengers to control and extract local ressources. The conclusion summarizes the paper’s major theoretical insights on the making and landing of electricity capital and the value-added of the frontier-making and territorialization analytical framework.