Between Renewable Energies and Local Communities: Considerations on Energy Citizenship in Northeast Brazil

Abstract

The concept of citizenship is mutable, adapting to new perspectives on the State, rights, systems of government, and common challenges, such as the current climate crisis, which is based on the world's high energy dependence on fossil fuels. In the context of the necessary low-carbon energy transition and the expansion of renewable energies in Brazil, this study aims to understand what energy citizenship is and how it is exercised (or not) in the Northeast region of Brazil, impacted by the arrival of wind and solar renewable energies. To achieve this objective, a qualitative approach is used, carried out through bibliographic and documentary research, extending into three sections of development. As a result, it is noted that energy citizenship encompasses access to energy and the fight against energy poverty, but it is not limited to this, since its exercise in the Northeast is not guaranteed a priori, which requires political and cultural mobilization of organized social movements in the pursuit of civility, the guarantee of rights, and the imposition of limitations on the actions of companies in the wind and solar sector.