This month we are really excited to have a conversation with Rubén Vezzoni, who is one of our University of Helsinki colleagues from the Doctoral Programme in Political, Soci­etal and Regional Change. His work looks at different aspects of the political economy of the EU’s green transition, with case studies on solar panels, hydrogen, and post-growth agri-food systems. In our conversation we focused in on “green” hydrogen and whether in practice it can live up to the grand narratives that are told about it, or whether it is just a story that obscure what is really going on. Rubén gives us some insights into the Finnish context and how the externalities from the consumption here are exported to other places, for example in the global South. The amount of stuff that we consume continues to increase, even under the auspices of green transition. To be able to exist these new technologies require more materials, more input, and more extraction. We look at the lock-ins and path dependencies and especially the drivers of relentless capital expansion and accumulation. 

Resources mentioned during the episode:

The Social Limits to Growth by Fred Hirsch https://www.routledge.com/Social-Limits-to-Growth/Hirsch/p/book/9780415119580 

Interested to read more of Rubén’s work? 

“The Finnish Bioeconomy Beyond Growth” (this is the report that is discussed during the episode) http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-380-817-1 

“How “clean” is the hydrogen economy? Tracing the connections between hydrogen and fossil fuels” https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2024.100817

“Joining the ideational and the material: transforming food systems toward radical food democracy” https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2024.1307759/full

Check out his University profile here https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/ruben-vezzoni