The Energy Transition Has a Human Cost Problem

The Energy Transition was supposed to be the good news story of the century. A new international study argues that, for the communities living next to its biggest projects, it has too often meant broken promises and bulldozed rights instead.

Researchers involving the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona examined fifteen cases of social conflict around large renewable energy projects — solar, hydro, wind and geothermal — spanning the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Chile, Brazil, India and Western Sahara, according to the study's summary. The work, recently published in the journal Ecological Economics, focuses on the Italian energy giant Enel, one of the largest electricity utilities on the planet and the majority owner of the Spanish energy company Endesa.

The researchers' conclusion is blunt: large energy corporations wrap their projects in corporate sustainability language that legitimizes them, while in practice the surrounding communities are shut out of fair economic returns and their social and environmental concerns go unheard.

What "shared value" left out

Enel has promoted a corporate concept it calls "Creating Shared Value," presented as a modern way to benefit both the company and local populations. The study's authors are not persuaded. They argue the framework functions as a moral upgrade of old-school corporate social responsibility — one in which the corporation alone decides what counts as value in the Energy Transition.

Left out of that definition, the authors say, are the things affected communities actually value: cultural ties to the land, food sovereignty, health, and control over their own natural resources. When a solar park or wind farm arrives with a pre-written story about shared prosperity, the people whose fields and water are at stake find their own priorities missing from the script.

The cases were not marginal disputes. Across eight countries, communities confronted the company over infringements of their rights — the pattern was systemic enough that the researchers describe the expansion of renewables as routinely sidelining the claims and livelihoods of the people in its path.

Not all clean energy conflicts look alike

The new findings gain weight when set beside earlier research from the same Barcelona institute, which mapped conflicts around low-carbon energy on a much larger scale. That analysis looked at one hundred sixty hydropower plants across forty-three countries and found almost eighty-five per cent of the cases involved high or medium-intensity conflict, with Indigenous peoples caught up in six out of ten disputes, according to the university's announcement.

Hydropower emerged as the most socially and environmentally damaging of the low-carbon options in that earlier analysis — linked to mass displacement and, in the worst cases, violence against opponents. "The case of hydropower dams shows that even less carbon-emitting technologies can cause severe impacts and lead to intense conflicts," co-author Daniela Del Bene said at the time. "The Energy Transition is not only a matter of what technology or energy source to use but also of who controls and decides upon our energy systems."

Wind, solar and geothermal projects, by contrast, ranked as the least conflictive in that dataset, with lower levels of repression. The new Enel-focused study complicates that reassuring picture: it suggests the problem is not just which technology gets built, but which corporate playbook builds it.

The counterpoint from the industry

Utilities like Enel would argue — and have argued — that their sustainability frameworks genuinely aim to share the benefits of the transition, and that large-scale projects are the fastest route to cutting emissions at the pace the climate crisis demands. There is real tension here: the world needs enormous amounts of clean power built quickly, and community-led projects, while more legitimate locally, often move slower and deliver less capacity.

The researchers' answer is that speed bought by steamrolling communities is a false economy. Conflicts around mega wind and solar infrastructure, co-author Sofia Avila has argued, are not attempts to block climate solutions but efforts to open political space for fairer approaches — from Mexico's long-running disputes over a wind power corridor in Oaxaca to emerging proposals for cooperative, decentralized energy schemes.

"Participation and inclusiveness are key to resolving our socio-environmental crises," said Prof. Nicolas Kosoy of McGill University, another voice in the earlier research. "Both green and brown energy projects can lead to ecological devastation and social exclusion if local communities and ecosystems rights continue to be trampled upon."

Why Gen Z should care about who builds the green future

This is your climate fight as much as anyone's — and the question of how the transition happens will shape the world you inherit. If the green economy is built the same way the fossil economy was — with big corporations deciding, and local people absorbing the costs — then "clean" describes the electrons, not the process.

The stakes are already visible in Europe. When heat deaths spike and young people march for climate justice, the demand is not just for more renewables but for a transition that does not sacrifice some communities to save the climate for others. You can follow more of our climate coverage on how extreme heat is already killing people in Belgium, the thousands who marched through Brussels demanding real action, and how European youth took their climate justice demands to the UN summit.

The researchers' closing message is aimed at policymakers: pay attention to what collective movements are actually demanding, and build climate policy around it. The transition is inevitable. Whether it is just is still up for grabs.