On unequal energy exchange and vulnerability in a world at war
A lot of talk about investing in energy and industry in the Global South, but the practice is still hijacked by the global market. It shows we're still more vulnerable to global shocks than we think.
The war waged by the United States and Israel against Iran has reverberated across the globe. Disruptions to prices and the supply of goods have triggered further shocks and consequences, as part of the mechanism of a widespread crisis that other researchers and I refer to as the planetary polycrisis. One of the issues is that although the impact on prices and stocks do affect the rest of the world deeply, the press and political commentators tend to normalise these as regular side effects of a globalised economy. Matters of dependency, colonialism and the real cost of human lives are secondary, due to inverted priorities and a general lack of structural analysis. As a result, we seem stuck in shock mode when it comes to the polycrisis, meaning both the tendency of simply chasing the economic shocks when they happen and being shocked ourselves that they happen, without removing the reasons why.
[an earlier version of this text was published in Portuguese at The Intercept Brasil - confira a versão em português aqui]
The attacks on oil refineries and desalination plants, once rare and considered dangerous escalations, now dominate newspaper headlines and signal a world in turmoil that has no regard for rules or boundaries. It has been the case for a while, mostly evidenced by the inaction and normalisation of the genocide in Gaza and whatever else Trump and Netanyahu are up to nowadays. Together, they test the waters of the absurd, just to see if the world will let them move the dial of death and imperialism a little further and, of course, get a glimpse into how much money can be made through war and ecocide.
Yet, it is deeply concerning that the debate that we keep focusing primarily on analysing the leaders involved and how their decisions impact economic and market factors, as if the scenario of widespread death, with its human and ecological cost, were merely a backdrop. In a world of general online betting on absolutely everything, it is problematic that we sit down and try to guess Trump’s next move rather than ensuring, through just transitions and structural transformation, that whatever he does won’t impact us as much as before. This is especially true here in the Global South, for our historical conditions are plagued by growing economic dependencies and unequal ecological exchange. Whereas the emerging powers in the region appear to be keen on reducing these dependencies, appealing to other international cooperation arrangements and important tools concerning green industrial policy or resource nationalisation, there’s still a big blindspot along the way for reducing unequal ecological exchange. In fact, industrialising at home is no guarantee that this exchange will be lessened. It might just be the case that the more we produce of something at home with the purpose of providing for the global market, the more we will extract, not even benefitting local uses.
One of my favourite cases for highlighting this contradiction is Indonesia. Whereas its policy on nickel is praised almost everywhere as a prime example of green industrial policy in the Global South, ensuring that unequal economic exchange is reduced and that better jobs are created out of nickel production, as it stands today, the growth in nickel processing has also meant more greenhouse gases emissions from coal-fired plants and more sacrifice zones from mining. All the while, the nickel processing and future nickel battery plants aim to service a market of nickel-based EV batteries that sits mostly outside of Indonesia, given that Indonesia’s domestic EV market is dominated by more affordable cars that rely on LFP batteries instead of nickel-based batteries. Therefore, it might be decent industrial policy, but whether it is actually green and whether it actually reduces dependencies on imports, that’s a whole other story.
But in addition to the mega-extractivist sector, we can easily point out the tunnel visions in energy policy. Global South countries looking to decarbonise or to become energy exporters instead of net importers have pushed towards more investments in national infrastructure. But what good is it when, at the end of the day, the more energy we produce, the more of it can be grabbed locally by agribusiness, dirty industries and, as is more and more the case, data centres owned by Big Tech?
Therefore, if we consider that wars and disputes over hegemony in such an unequal geopolitical system are, at heart, about the control of people and life, we understand that conflicts involving energy, water and other resources are never merely about accumulation. If, on one side, oil wells are seized, there is always another side without electricity, without fuel or without access to the basics for social functioning. In times of widespread energy crisis, it is worth understanding how this is an orchestrated crisis and how, once again, energy poverty exists as a tool for dominating the periphery. Allow me to bring in the context of Brazil and Cuba to the conversation.
What we mean by energy poverty
The Brazilian federal government defines energy poverty as “the lack of access to modern energy services by individuals or groups”. This formal definition is applied to guide public policy and is similar to the view taken in other countries. However, in the reality of a world in the throes of intense social conflict, energy poverty is much more than a problem of access to infrastructure, whether due to its absence or its cost.
In the field of energy justice and democracy, we understand energy poverty to be a state of systemic exclusion of people and groups from the resources necessary to meet their needs for a full life. This occurs through the commodification of energy and the capture of resources, infrastructure and strategic knowledge by dominant sectors. Consequently, energy poverty reflects class inequalities within a society and international disorder, such that peoples have their right to self-determination and autonomy denied in the energy context as well.
From this, we realise that energy poverty has many facets. Regarding economic access, we know that almost half a million people in Brazil still live without electricity. These are not people who choose to live without electricity, but groups and regions that have to improvise access to electricity and, as a result, are also denied their right to other public services, including healthcare and education. This is where energy poverty makes its daily home. In a world of intense energy expansion—whether in aggregate consumption or in the implementation of infrastructure projects focused on electricity, heating and fuels—the International Energy Agency warns: over 700 million people remained without access to electricity in 2024, thereby also undermining their stable and secure access to other basic rights.
This disparity has its historical roots in capitalism, colonialism and the imperialist system of domination. This explains the energy poverty faced by Ukrainians, Sudanese, Palestinians, Lebanese and Yemenis in situations of war, occupation and humanitarian disaster. The technology exists, as does the global capacity to guarantee the necessary infrastructure as a human right. But as energy is a commodity and a resource for the accumulation of power, entire peoples are excluded as both means and ends to achieve goals of domination.
In 2024, data centres consumed around 415 terawatt-hours of energy, and companies such as Microsoft are promoting the reactivation of nuclear power stations simply to ensure the supply meets their demand. Meanwhile, the world is accelerating the race for critical minerals to ensure the electrification of the capitalist way of life. Therefore, allowing hundreds of millions of people to remain in the dark is a choice.
Dependence and power cuts designed by imperialism to punish Cubans into submission
Recently, the Brazilian historian Rafael Domingos Oliveira described a little of what it is like to be in Cuba during the most severe phase of its energy crisis. When fuel runs out, solid waste piles up in the streets and the lack of collection creates an environment conducive to the spread of disease. Rationing and prioritising generators for essential services such as hospitals cannot cope with the increase in demand, as the energy crisis acts as a catalyst for other crises, exacerbating problems and hindering structural solutions. The blockade, which has been strangling the Cuban economy for decades, has also left its energy infrastructure vulnerable, effectively cutting Cubans off from sovereign and free avenues to procure supplies, carry out maintenance and technical improvements, and invest in autonomous capacity – as would be the case if Cuba could participate in cooperation models aimed at expanding renewable energies such as solar and wind power.
It is not as though Cuba were oblivious to the benefits of an energy transition. Countries suffering from high commercial or political dependence on partners that supply them with fossil fuels, as is the case with Cuba, find in the expansion of renewable supply a path to autonomy and protection against external shocks and attacks. Although historically Cuba has depended on Venezuela, Russia and other allies to supply its thermal power stations, there has also been a recent effort to diversify this mix, to the extent that solar photovoltaic power reached 9% of the total energy mix in 2025, mainly through trade with China and Spain.
US sanctions hinder the establishment of fruitful and stable trade relations, as well as damaging the national economy, which has increasingly less revenue and more debt, making it difficult for the state and locally operating businesses to invest. The tourism sector, so central to the Cuban economy, nearly collapsed during the pandemic and today reveals a hotel sector – featuring many Spanish chains such as Iberostar and Meliá – with critically low occupancy rates and difficulty accessing supplies to attract the tourists who still visit the island. As an island mired in energy poverty cannot even maintain an optimal flow of flights, the crisis in tourism means further economic crisis.
And this is how Cuba, which could have escaped the systemic blackout through a solid energy transition strategy, is unable to secure the most basic tools for its independence. If European countries recognise the current oil price shock and import barriers as an energy crisis, what has been happening in Cuba for six decades is far more profound. Darkness is not a symptom of the crisis; it is the blocking of the capacity to confront a permanent colonial and imperialist crisis.
Unequal energy exchange - or the theft of energy in an increasingly electrified world
In the face of extreme cases of energy poverty, we must also speak of energy impoverishment. Here, we encounter situations distinct from rationing and widespread blackouts, as the process of energy impoverishment occurs by ensuring that countries and sectors already rich in energy retain their privileged access, hindering a fairer and more democratic distribution of energy expansion, and in certain cases capturing energy generation for the exclusive benefit of billionaires and large corporations.
The aforementioned example of data centres is particularly striking, especially as there are many projects to establish mega-centres for big tech companies in regions experiencing water stress or fragmented and scarce provision of essential services. We already know that the number of data centres grew by 628% in Brazil in just ten years, between 2013 and 2023, and that some of them consume as much electricity as an entire municipality.
Brazil and other countries in the region, such as Chile, are attractive to these companies, particularly in terms of their renewable energy expansion plans, as they guarantee access to decarbonised energy sources, supporting greenhouse gas emission targets that facilitate other corporate investments. In some cases, it is claimed that there is a local oversupply of renewable energy and that data centres can make better use of this, especially if they benefit from tax breaks and other incentives.
This logic is strange, yet typical of an energy market built without energy democracy in mind.
Recently, Brazil renewed the concessions for coal-fired power stations until 2040, and one of the public arguments – including that of the Minister of Mines and Energy – was that maintaining such a dirty source of electricity is necessary as a pillar of energy security, given that Brazilian electricity consumption is estimated to grow by an average of 3.3% per year until 2035. This growth forecast already incorporates the projected demand from new or expanding sectors, such as data centres. The message, therefore, is simple: since we do not manage the electricity sector for the sake of efficiency and democracy, we will expand all sources of supply, including dirty ones, so that there is no shortage of energy for the foreign data centres setting up in the country.
A similar logic is presented in the projects and memoranda of understanding regarding the production of green hydrogen in the Global South. There are many cases in regions such as Latin America and North Africa where investment and technical cooperation agreements aim to establish veritable private estates for wind and solar photovoltaic production, the megawatts from which will be destined for green hydrogen plants.
One of the central objectives is to invest in the technological development of ‘green’ energy commodities. Since it is not possible to export wind and solar energy directly to other distant continents, the approach is to use them as an electricity source for the production of green hydrogen and even conversion into green ammonia, which in turn can be exported for use as fuel or fertilisers. Although such investments lack technological maturity, particularly in terms of transport and efficiency, the actions of countries such as Germany indicate an interest in ensuring that the renewable energy generation capacity of the Global South can meet their ever-increasing demand for energy, given that they have no intention of curbing their high consumption.
Energy privatisation threatens the sovereignty of the Brazilian people
This leads us to question the contradiction between discourses on energy sovereignty—reduced to the control and capacity to exploit energy resources such as oil—the priority given to exports, and the normalisation of a private sector that operates the domestic energy system, prioritising profit. If the presence of these corporations is already a threat to basic energy security, why would any country aiming for energy sovereignty let them operate with such freedom as is the case in Brazil?
Enel Distribuição São Paulo, for example, continues to insist that it has acted appropriately in the face of blackouts in the areas where it operates, particularly in light of Technical Note No. 36/2026 from the National Electric Energy Agency (Aneel), which may finally impose a penalty commensurate with the negligence and general precariousness practised by the company. On 7 April, the Aneel board unanimously decided to recommend the termination of Enel’s concession contract in São Paulo to the Ministry of Mines and Energy. Even the São Paulo City Council, which is firmly in favour of privatisation across the board, criticises the utility’s performance, claiming that “Enel is a company that fails to fulfil its commitments to the city, providing a deplorable service to the population”. This appalling service stems from a business model common to private concessions, which involves reducing staff numbers and under-investing in infrastructure and system maintenance, whilst profits and dividends are guaranteed.
Power cuts of this kind do not affect everyone equally. The elitist and racist dynamics of the organisation of urban space – and of the urban in relation to the rural – shape the focus of service provision and private infrastructure, whilst also affecting the capitalist public sector, which reproduces inequalities in its operations. As argued by journalist Ivan Costa, “in the favelas and suburbs, where access to energy is often unstable and the electricity grid is precarious, the impacts are felt more acutely”.
Whilst in major cities, middle-class and luxury housing estates have already begun investing in generators for emergency power supply in the event of prolonged blackouts, such investment cannot be expected in neighbourhoods and regions most marked by severe socio-economic inequality. This is also a symptom of energy poverty. And when a working-class family loses all the food stored in their fridge because they went 48 hours without electricity, this also contributes to a scenario of food insecurity. These crises are interconnected and deeply shaped by power structures, to the extent that the supposed quest for Brazilian energy sovereignty must take into account the damage caused by the private concession model for electricity distribution in the country.
Our Eletrobras was privatised for a mere R$ 33.7 billion in 2022 – a sum far below the approximate value of the company – and was renamed Axia Energia in 2025. It is responsible for 81 power stations (47 hydroelectric, 33 wind and one solar) and around 74,000 kilometres of transmission lines. Last year, it also sold its shares in Eletronuclear and effectively handed over the majority of the capital relating to Brazil’s nuclear energy production to Âmbar Energia, a company belonging to the J&F Group, owned by brothers Joesley and Wesley Batista. Âmbar also operates the Candiota coal-fired power station in Rio Grande do Sul and benefited from the law that renewed contracts with thermal power stations. The very same Ministry of Mines and Energy that encouraged the retention of coal in Brazil’s energy mix proposed paying a price of R$ 540.27 per MWh for Candiota, when, according to a report in Folha de S.Paulo, the average price charged by competitors using imported coal is R$ 359.50.
This is a context in which the national supply of electricity is expanding, but we are also paying more for it and cannot even be certain of a secure, continuous and equitable supply. It was in full awareness of the social and economic harm caused by privatisation in the electricity sector that Brazilian electricity workers launched a campaign as early as 2022 for the renationalisation of Eletrobras. At the time, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was still a presidential candidate and, according to the National Collective of Electricity Workers, had signalled his support for renationalisation.
In 2023, the Federal Attorney-General’s Office (AGU) filed a Direct Action of Unconstitutionality, also signed by Lula, with the Federal Supreme Court (STF), to challenge aspects of the privatisation, particularly the drastic reduction in the federal government’s voting power within the company. However, in 2025, the government itself abandoned this fight, proposing an agreement that validated the sale, despite public opposition.
Exploring paths to energy democracy
Although the approach that turns energy into a commodity demonstrates its flaws and injustices time and again, it has become quite normalised amidst crises. This makes crises appear as accidents or exceptional moments caused by external factors, such as authoritarian decisions by fascist regimes or mishaps along the way. A more holistic and peripheral view of the polycrisis suggests that this is not quite the case. If crises are not felt uniformly everywhere, the way of addressing them will not be the same either.
For this reason, agendas for renationalisation are very important, ranging from the field of energy production and distribution to sectors such as mining. Whilst cases such as Cuba’s require practical acts of solidarity—such as the dispatch of resources and photovoltaic panels by the government of China, as well as by Brazilian civil society groups—they also teach us the value of nurturing our autonomy. For us in the Global South, subject to these paths of dependency and vulnerability, it is our duty to refuse to hand over control of our infrastructure to private groups, placing energy democracy at the heart of our planning for supply and distribution. Only in this way will we have a sufficient foundation to build real energy sovereignty and contribute to a strategy that does more than help us navigate the shocks of the polycrisis. True sovereignty - as ecological sovereignty - is the pathway to actual economic immunity to these shocks and should be a priority for the Global South.