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Published:May 2025
Chapter 2, “Space,” introduces the corporate energy “equicrat”—an equity-minded technocrat—by exploring how energy experts in New York City use cloud-based platforms to affectively connect with marginalized spaces. It begins by discussing Google Earth simulations that visualize solar panels on rooftops in poor communities of color. Lennon argues that these visual interfaces and similar platforms work in tandem with the decentralized spatiality of sustainable energy technologies to enable white energy experts to work with poor communities of color, demanding that they engage closely with everyday people in intimate, personal spaces. This, in turn, transforms the political contours of energy expertise, fostering an ideologically muddied form of technocratic care that conjoins free market practice with socialist and leftist principles. As such, the cloud-based culture of energy experts taps into a late liberal imaginary that portrays solar and energy efficiency commodities as tools for ameliorating the structural inequalities of racial capitalism.
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