Reading California’s Power Grid: A Metonymic Methodology

Abstract

As climate change intensifies, the global imperative to minimize carbon emissions and move beyond oil deepens. Many visions for the future of energy imagine increased electrification as a solution to the transition away from fossil fuels that does not require major cultural change. In this imaginary, electricity acts as a bridge between the fossil-fueled twentieth century and technologically driven green energy futures. Not only does the vision of a green electrified future fail to address the unjust cultural and political power relations that surround energy systems, it also ignores the already disastrous impacts climate change has had on the US power grid. Examining the environmental entanglements of and the cultural imaginaries that shape electrification is necessary to imagining and enacting more just and transformative energy futures that do not use electrification as a means of prolonging the current extractive, colonial, and capitalist cultural approaches to energy. This essay takes as its starting point the tension between visions of green electric futures and the material reality of the grid. Focusing on California’s electricity grid, this essay analyzes electricity’s complicated web of power relations by triangulating three case studies that apply a metonymic methodology for close reading the region’s power grid. PG&E’s smart meter upgrades are the focus of the first case study. The second case study examines California’s recent electricity equipment–sparked superfires. Finally, the essay concludes with a third case study focused on PG&E’s public safety power shutoffs, the utility’s safety response intended to prevent additional fires. Ultimately, the three case studies, when juxtaposed, provide very different perspectives on the dominant narratives surrounding electrification. When triangulated, the case studies show how the imaginary of easily accessed limitless electricity, which fuels visions of increased electrification as a solution to climate change, relies on both an abstraction of the power grid and the continuation of unjust colonial practices.