MaRC · Materializing Renewable Capital
Horizon Europe — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2022-08-15 → 2025-10-14
- EU contribution
- €222,728
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Materializing Renewable Capital
The Materializing Renewable Capital (MaRC) project explored one of the defining challenges of the 21st century: how to finance the global energy transition. Although renewable technologies are becoming cheaper, global investment in clean energy remains far below what is required to meet the Paris Agreement targets. The International Energy Agency estimates that nearly four trillion USD per year is needed by 2030—yet actual spending is only a fraction of that. MaRC asked why. Starting from autumn 2022 at Uppsala University, the project examined how the materiality of renewable energy production—its physical, technical, and geological characteristics—shapes the mobilization of capital needed for transition. Drawing together insights from economic geography, political economy, and energy studies, the project analyzed how production processes, financial logics, and institutional expectations interact to make or constrain investment in renewables. The overarching goal was to build a new understanding of how energy markets perform transitions—not as linear replacements of old systems, but as uneven, contested, and often contradictory processes in which fossil and renewable sectors coexist. This research directly supports the EU Green Deal’s aim to promote a fair, just, and evidence-based transformation of the energy system.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
The International Energy Agency’s recent Net Zero by 2050 report concludes that by 2030 four trillion USD of annual global investment into clean energy is needed to avert catastrophic climate change. Yet in the last four years such investments have averaged just one trillion. Critical economic geography has emphasized the role of non-price factors in this renewable investment gap. Materializing Renewable Capital (MaRC) advances this inquiry through a survey of how the 'materiality' of the production process for 14 key components of the transition interlink with and inform renewable capital mobilization from energy financing firms. MaRC's objective is to (1) survey the materiality of key renewable production processes (2) assess how investors view the relative quality of these processes (3) create an integrated analysis of how their materiality relates to capital accumulation (4) create a future research program. Empirically, MaRC achieves these objectives through parallel surveys involving interviews and desk work. First, of the materiality of these production processes. Second, of the financial logic driving capital accumulation in these processes. Three papers will result. Results will also be communicated through a website, an online video, and 3 articles in the popular press. MaRC combines the extensive experience of the researcher in energy with the world-class expertise of the supervisor, Prof Brett Christophers, in finance. Additional support from Uppsala’s Earth Science department will ensure the success of this innovative, interdisciplinary project. This project will substantially improve the researcher’s career prospects, especially given the outstanding track-record of the supervisor with post-docs, multiple points of advising, and rich support from Uppsala University. The host, in turn, will benefit from the researcher’s outstanding teaching, seminars, and an interdisciplinary workshop on the renewable investment gap.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UPPSALA UNIVERSITET · UppsalaCoordinatorSweden
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/101064678
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e52331d4d3&appId=PPGMS
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e52332d476&appId=PPGMS
Data: CORDIS, © European Union