Solar industrialization, ‘sacrifice zones,’ and new environmental movements: Emerging discourses of commonality and critique in Portugal’s energy transition

Abstract

The transition to renewable energy is being pursued within neoliberal frameworks that prioritize market competition and industrial development, increasingly resulting in significant negative socio-ecological consequences and environmental injustices. As a result, scholars and activists are increasingly taking up more radical discursive strategies, adopting critical terms like ‘sacrifice zone,’ to describe marginalized places. In short, critiques of fossil fuel regimes are increasingly accompanied by an emerging critique of hegemonic renewable energy regimes. Through a case study of community resistance to a large-scale solar PV project in Alentejo, Portugal, this article aims to further understand this critique by analysing the arguments and discursive strategies that local movements are utilizing against business-as-usual renewable energy transitions and how they are received by powerful actors. Findings reveal that opposition is not solely driven by self-interest or place-attachment, but is deeply rooted in critiques of procedural and distributive injustices, framed through the critical and constructive discourse of ‘sacrifice zone’ which not only enabled residents to make sense of what was happening, but also allowed them to build new forms of territorial commonality and critique. This study highlights how the concept of the ‘sacrifice zone’ functions as a means of co-producing new knowledge and as a tool for explaining and coping with change. From the perspective of pragmatic sociology, it can also be viewed as a critical strategy of self-vulnerabilization—one that resists change, demands recognition, challenges state authority, and attempts to foster new territorial movements.