Carbon(e)scapes: Disassembling the power of high-carbon imaginaries
Moving beyond fossil fuels requires more than replacing one technology with another. Existing infrastructures, institutions and local attachments can lock fossil fuels into low-carbon futures. Effective transition policy must therefore actively dismantle these dependencies while building alternatives that draw on local knowledge, material conditions and communities’ visions of desirable futures.
Moving beyond fossil fuels requires more than technological change
The transition away from fossil fuels is often approached as a question of replacing high-carbon technologies with low-carbon alternatives. Yet fossil-fuel dependence is embedded much more deeply. Energy systems are intertwined with infrastructures, institutions, economic interests, regional identities, working lives and ideas about what desirable futures should look like. Understanding these relationships is essential for designing policies capable of producing lasting and socially sustainable change.
The United Kingdom and Poland illustrate this challenge in different ways. In the UK, offshore oil and gas have been repeatedly reimagined to fit changing political priorities. Most recently, the idea of a “net zero basin” has brought oil and gas, offshore wind, hydrogen and carbon capture together within a common low-carbon future. As a result, existing infrastructures can be repurposed rather than abandoned, allowing fossil-fuel production to retain a place within visions of decarbonisation. Emerging hydrogen pathways similarly demonstrate how new technologies can become tied to existing gas infrastructures, industrial interests and regional development strategies.
Poland’s coal regions reveal another dimension of fossil-fuel persistence. In places such as Upper Silesia, coal is connected not only to energy production but also to work, community, identity and experiences of the local environment. Decarbonisation can therefore threaten valued social relationships as well as established industries. At the same time, these local attachments contain resources for imagining different futures. Communities can rework inherited relationships with energy and place rather than simply abandoning them.
Together, these findings point to an important knowledge need for transition policy. Policymakers need to understand both how fossil-fuel systems remain embedded in emerging low-carbon futures and how they can be disassembled without disregarding the people, places and material relationships formed around them. Transition policy must therefore look beyond technological substitution and engage with the institutional, material and social conditions that shape which energy futures become possible.
Understanding how fossil fuel futures can be dismantled
The purpose of this research project was to deepen understanding of why fossil-fuel-based energy systems persist during the transition to low-carbon energy and how these systems can be dismantled in ways that enable alternative futures to emerge. Rather than treating the energy transition primarily as a technological shift, the research examines the social, material, institutional and political relationships through which particular energy futures become established and sustained. The project approached this challenge from two complementary perspectives.
Research on the United Kingdom investigated how offshore oil and gas have remained embedded in national visions of the future, including through emerging technologies such as hydrogen and carbon capture, and how social movements attempt to challenge these established arrangements. It also develops a framework for understanding the different forms of power involved in stabilising and disassembling energy imaginaries.
Research in Polish coal regions examined transition from the perspective of communities and workers whose everyday lives are closely connected to fossil-fuel production. It investigates how relationships with work, place, infrastructure and the environment shape both resistance to change and possibilities for imagining post-coal futures.
Together, the research aimed to identify how entrenched fossil-fuel futures can be opened up to change while recognising the social and material relationships that transitions must negotiate. In doing so, it sought to provide knowledge for developing more transformative, locally grounded and socially attentive approaches to energy transition.
What successful transition must address
Low-carbon plans can prolong fossil-fuel dependence
The research shows that adopting low-carbon technologies does not automatically mean moving away from fossil fuels. In the UK, offshore oil and gas have repeatedly been adapted to new political and economic priorities. Since the early 2020s, this has been particularly visible in the vision of the North Sea as a “net zero basin”, where continued oil and gas production is combined with offshore wind, hydrogen and carbon capture and storage.
This creates opportunities for decarbonisation, but it can also extend the life of existing fossil-fuel systems. Renewable electricity can, for example, be used to reduce emissions from offshore oil and gas production without ending that production. Similarly, carbon capture can make continued gas use appear compatible with climate objectives. Hydrogen provides another example. Because hydrogen can potentially use parts of the infrastructure and industrial systems developed for natural gas, it has been presented as a way of decarbonising while maintaining existing systems. In Teesside, blue hydrogen – produced from natural gas combined with carbon capture – has been promoted as an early route towards a hydrogen economy. This can create continued demand for natural gas even as the energy system is described as transitioning away from fossil fuels.
Existing infrastructure and institutions shape which futures become possible
Physical infrastructure strongly influences transition pathways. Pipelines, ports, industrial clusters, offshore installations and geological storage sites are not simply remnants of the existing system. They can make some future technologies easier and more attractive to pursue than others.
The UK research shows that this effect is reinforced by institutions and policy. Rules and governance arrangements established during earlier periods can continue shaping energy choices long after the political circumstances in which they were created have changed. Fossil-fuel systems therefore persist partly because infrastructure, expertise, investment and institutions have accumulated around them.
The Polish research demonstrates the same problem from a different perspective. In Upper Silesia, coal is embedded in more than mines and power production. Mining has shaped employment, communities, landscapes and regional identities. For people living and working in these areas, moving away from coal can consequently involve changes to social relationships and ways of life as well as to energy production. Transition policies that overlook these relationships risk misunderstanding why existing systems are difficult to change.
Local attachments can become resources for alternative futures
However, strong connections to fossil-fuel regions do not necessarily translate into opposition to transition. The Polish cases show that people can simultaneously value relationships created around coal and recognise its environmental consequences. Coal can function as a source of community and identity while the experience of living in mining landscapes can also generate awareness of ecological damage.
These apparent contradictions create possibilities for transition. Workers and communities do not necessarily imagine a post-coal future as the complete replacement of everything associated with the past. Instead, existing skills, cooperation, knowledge of local environments and community relationships can be reworked towards different forms of energy production.
One concrete alternative emerging from the research is decentralised, community-oriented renewable energy. Among miners interviewed in Upper Silesia, locally controlled energy production emerged as a desirable post-coal possibility. Such alternatives suggest that transition policy can build on capacities already present in fossil-fuel communities rather than treating those communities only as barriers to decarbonisation.
The findings therefore highlight the importance of involving local actors in determining what should replace fossil-fuel production. People who have worked with and lived alongside energy infrastructures possess forms of practical and experiential knowledge that are easily missed by nationally designed transition programmes.
Dismantling fossil-fuel dependence requires action on several fronts
The UK research also demonstrates that established fossil-fuel systems can be challenged through multiple routes. Three campaigns illustrate this diversity. Greenpeace UK’s Atlantic Frontier campaign challenged offshore expansion by connecting particular extraction sites to the wider problem of climate change. It combined highly visible action, including the occupation of Rockall, with institutional interventions such as legal challenges and even an application for a renewable-energy licence.
More recently, campaigns against the Cambo, Jackdaw and Rosebank fields have used technical analysis and legal action to challenge arguments for new offshore developments. Campaigners produced reports and assessments questioning claims about energy security, economic benefits and emissions. Legal challenges also produced concrete effects: in January 2025, the Court of Session overturned the consents for the Jackdaw and Rosebank fields and required the assessment process to be redone.
Just Stop Oil pursued a different approach, using disruption of infrastructure and everyday activities to challenge the continued normalisation of fossil-fuel use. Although its methods differed substantially from the other campaigns, the case demonstrates another location at which established energy arrangements can be contested: the everyday systems and practices through which fossil-fuel dependence becomes largely invisible.
Summary
Taken together, these cases show that no single intervention is sufficient. Fossil-fuel dependence is maintained simultaneously through infrastructure, institutions, expertise, economic relationships, political decisions and everyday practices. Correspondingly, change can come through policy reform, legal action, alternative expertise, local participation, new ownership arrangements and the development of different infrastructures.
Across both the UK and Polish cases, the central result is therefore that a durable energy transition cannot be achieved through technological substitution alone. Policies must distinguish between innovations that genuinely reduce fossil-fuel dependence and those that primarily adapt existing systems to new climate objectives. At the same time, dismantling existing systems does not require erasing everything associated with fossil-fuel regions. Skills, infrastructure, local knowledge and social relationships can be selectively reworked to help build alternatives – if communities have meaningful opportunities to shape what comes next.
Moving beyond fossil fuels requires changing systems, not only technologies
Decarbonisation does not automatically reduce fossil-fuel dependence
Low-carbon technologies can contribute to reducing emissions while simultaneously extending the life of fossil-fuel systems. The UK cases show how hydrogen, carbon capture and renewable electricity can become integrated with existing oil and gas infrastructure and institutions. Transition policy needs to look beyond whether a technology is classified as low-carbon and consider whether investments and policies reduce long-term fossil-fuel dependence or reinforce existing systems.
Existing infrastructures and institutions influence the direction of transition
Energy transitions do not start from a blank slate. Existing pipelines, industrial facilities, skills, regulations and investment patterns make some pathways easier to pursue than others. Institutional arrangements created to support fossil-fuel production can also continue influencing decisions long after policy objectives have changed. Policymakers need to identify which existing structures can support a transition and which risk locking energy systems into continued fossil-fuel use.
Transition should build on local knowledge without reproducing fossil-fuel dependence
The Polish cases show that relationships developed around fossil-fuel production are not simply obstacles to change. Workers and communities possess skills, knowledge, social relationships and experience of local environments that can contribute to developing alternatives. A just transition does not require erasing the histories and identities of fossil-fuel regions. It necessitates creating opportunities for communities to rework these resources towards different futures and to participate meaningfully in deciding what those futures should be.
Dismantling fossil-fuel dependence requires interventions at several levels
Fossil-fuel systems are sustained through multiple interconnected elements: infrastructure, institutions, expertise, economic interests, political decisions, identities and everyday practices. Consequently, no single policy instrument or technological solution can transform them. The UK cases demonstrate that established arrangements can be challenged through different routes, including institutional reform, alternative expertise, legal processes and public mobilisation. Effective transition strategies therefore need to act across several of these dimensions simultaneously.
Transition policy must both dismantle and build
Taken together, the research points to a dual task for policymakers. Transition policy must actively weaken the institutional and material arrangements that reproduce fossil-fuel dependence while simultaneously creating conditions in which alternative energy futures can develop. This means combining long-term direction with attention to place: scrutinising whether new investments perpetuate fossil-fuel systems, reforming institutions that favour incumbent pathways, and enabling workers and communities to use existing knowledge, relationships and material resources to shape viable alternatives.
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