Power to the people : thinking (and rethinking) energy poverty in British Columbia, Canada ...

• Main Author: Rezaei, Maryam
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2017
• Subjects: First Nations
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0351974; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0351974

Energy poverty, or the experience of struggling to meet one’s energy needs, is increasingly the subject of attention in Canada — though no established definition for it exists and the definitions that are used often obscure its connections with the systemic processes that create it. In this dissertation, I situate energy poverty as a justice issue and operationalize various understandings of justice (distributive, procedural, recognition-based and restorative) to discuss how energy poverty may be conceptualized in the settler- colonial context of Canada, and, indeed, how different conceptualization reveal different processes of its creation, as well as different approaches to addressing it. Based on empirical work with two First Nations communities in British Columbia (Musqueam and Tsay Keh Dene), I outline the unfolding of energy poverty in BC amidst a constructed narrative of energy plenty, which aims to expand the reach of the extractive energy industry in the province. In doing so, I link specific energy ...