The Energy Permacrisis by Sandy Smith Nonini

The Energy Permacrisis by Sandy Smith Nonini

The Energy Permacrisis investigates a series of increasingly frequent energy crises over the last 15 years – amid rapid changes in climate, energy resources, finance and politics. It employs a case study approach to highlight the rise of energy crises in middle to high-income societies that have long enjoyed access to electricity and modern transportation.

Written against the backdrop of the pandemic crash and 2022 energy inflation, Sandy Smith-Nonini provides a timely and critical analysis of how fossil fuel shocks are reshaping the political economy. Drawing on her ethnographic research, the author examines how oil dependency and trans-border kleptocracy shaped Greece’s debt crisis and Puerto Rico’s 2017 grid collapse while spurring social resistance. Smith-Nonini pulls together data showing the pivotal impacts of soaring gasoline prices and oil speculators in the 2008 financial crisis. She explores the under-reported role of monopoly traders in the 2021 Texas blackout and global impacts and lessons from the 2022 crisis. Three chapters analyze hydrocarbon aspects of the Ukraine, Gaza and Iran wars. Overall, the book highlights how fossil dependency threatens family livelihoods, health, vital services and economies, and points to policy solutions for a humane climate/energy transition.

Written in a journalistic style by a critical political anthropologist, The Energy Permacrisis will be of great interest to a wide range of readers including students and scholars of energy and climate change, political ecology, environmental studies, policymakers and advocates.

"Smith-Nonini systematically and incisively explores the complex ways in which energy and financial politics are entangledShe shows how, over the past several decades, energy prices have been entwined with banking, technological innovations, lifestyles, wars, injustices, and climate change. This book helps us see how, far from simply a matter of physical power, access to energy is always about access to money."

- Alf Hornborg, Professor Emeritus of Human Ecology, Lund University, Sweden

“The Energy Permacrisis is a valuable resource for scholars seeking to understand the connections between energy, climate change, finance, and global politics. By combining historical depth with contemporary case studies, Sandy Smith-Nonini demonstrates how energy crises are shaped by power, inequality, and fossil capitalism, offering important insights into the challenges of a just and sustainable energy transition. A must read for all students of contemporary capitalism and the energy that undergirds our civilizational order.”

- Tim Di Muzio, Associate Professor of IR and Political Economy, University of Wollongong, Australia

Sandy Smith-Nonini is an affiliated Researcher and former Adjunct Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA, where she taught for 18 years. She is a recipient of the Peter K. New Prize for applied anthropology and co-founded CommunEcos, an environmental education non-profit.