ABSTRACT
The global decarbonisation and green politics trends are not happening without a cost. Green New Deals and urban renaturalisation practices are discursively constructing a ‘global sustainability’ imaginary. The rapid and large-scale deployment of renewable energy and green urban redevelopment is shifting the associated social costs to territories and populations ‘in the margins’. In this contribution, we sketch how cost-shifting is part and parcel of urban greening and renewable energy transition projects and initiatives from Spain, China, and Chile. We argue that reducing or minimising short-, medium-, and long-range cost-shifting practices should be at the forefront of transformational degrowth (urban) planning. This minimisation entails taking a due account of social costs associated with the extraction and use of material and energy and the location and siting of new ‘green’ infrastructure and its associated justice implications.
