Green Capitalism – A New Regime of Accumulation?

Topic

Keynote: Brett Christophers (Uppsala University, Sweden), Thea Riofrancos (Providence College, Rhode Island, USA)

There seems to be no easy way of reconciling capitalism and the Earth system. While some see capitalism as the root cause of today’s environmental crisis, economists still maintain that it is precisely the pursuit of private profit that will ultimately bring about the common ecological good: with the right incentive structures, capitalism could overcome the historical link between growth and the overuse of resources and sinks. With properly designed markets, pricing, subsidies, and taxes, capitalism could deliver a greened economy more efficiently and cheaply than any alternative economic systems. Against this, critics argue that capitalism systematically undermines its own ecological conditions of production, and that any serious, long-term engagement with ecological problems would require more social control of basic infrastructures and more direct, use-value-based planning of production.

Within the Marxist tradition, the relation between environmental degradation and capitalism has been conceptualized as an ecological contradiction: the imperative to accumulate capital stands in contradiction to the need to reproduce the social and ecological conditions of this accumulation. Prefiguring the idea of an eco-contradiction, Marx already assumed that “the entire spirit of capitalist production, which is oriented towards the most immediate monetary profit – stands in contradiction to agriculture, which has to concern itself with the whole gamut of permanent conditions of life required by the chain of human generations” In James O’Connor’s pioneering work, the ecological ‘second’ contradiction refers to capitalism’s inner tendency to generate crises through the degradation and destruction of ecosystems. As capital accumulation relies on natural conditions that it does not replenish, it faces a gradually declining quality of the environment or higher cost of maintaining it. According to O’Connor––and scholars building on him like Jason W. Moore––capitalism has reached a stage where this leads to a crisis of underproduction that ultimately threatens the continuation of accumulation. Other scholars share the diagnosis that capitalism undermines its ecological conditions of reproduction, but doubt that this contradiction pushes towards its resolution: the ‘metabolic rift’ can cause immense suffering without necessarily posing an existential threat to capitalism. This would mean opening up the scope beyond a narrow ‘capital-centric’ analysis. And ecofeminist theories can remind us that the ecological contradiction is not new––capitalism has always depended on and at the same time undermined the social and natural conditions of its reproduction. Marxist ecofeminism highlights the role of representations of nature and femininity––based on a dual process of feminization of nature and naturalization of women––and of relations of (re)production in the environmental crisis. Drawing on Rosa Luxemburg, the subsistence framework has accounted for the contradictory relationship between the capitalist mode of production and non-capitalist environments. While these controversies in ecological Marxism are located at a high level of abstraction, the actual dynamic processing of ecological contradictions in practice remains comparatively under-addressed. What is necessary today is not simply re-defining the nature of this contradiction (with reference to Marx, for instance) but in seeing how it unfolds in real time, how it interacts with other capitalist contradictions and crisis tendencies and how it shapes today’s political economy and conflicts, irrespective of where it finally leads and if its resolvable.

While the theoretical debate on the ecological contradiction rages on, traces of green capitalism arguably already exist. Policies of ecological modernization such as the IRA or the Green Deal have become a central part of economic policy: governments around the world have created markets for environmental goods and provided incentives for ESG investment. Conversely, there is strong capital interest in various ‘green’ markets and ‘clean’ technologies such as solar and wind power, hydrogen or grid services. For some, these attempts have already failed on their own terms, as neither emissions trading nor ‘green’ investment has delivered substantial change in recent decades. After a brief period of enthusiasm, even the financial class now seems to have lost faith in ESG ratings to channel money into greening the economy. Others argue that despite the shortcomings of some of these policies, there has been significant change in recent years: net-zero pledges by major corporations, the imminent peak of Chinese carbon emissions, and a new geopolitical competition for green technology value chains suggest that a decarbonised economy may emerge not only from democratic socialist planning, but also from the business as usual of a new green type of the mixed economy.

The conference aims to bridge the previously stated gap in ecological Marxism, that the theoretical controversies do not necessary reflect today’s real world developments. We thus aim to facilitate a dialogue between theoretical debates in ecological Marxism and concrete inquiries of green capitalism. The first part of this conference explores conceptual questions relating to the ecological contradictions of capitalism. It asks, among other things, what is the status and what are the main theoretical and methodological challenges for ecological Marxism today? How has the research on Marx and ecology contributed to Marxist ecology? Is there an ecological proletariat? Is critical theory, historical materialism, or eco-socialism up to analytic task? More specifically:

·      Nature and/or Capital: What is the form of the conflict between capital and nature today, and how is it unfolding at a variety of temporal scales and geographical locations?

·      Within/Beyond Limits: How should limits be thought in relation to capital’s inner drive to push beyond them?

·      Resolution/Destruction: What would it mean for capitalism to really ‘undermine’ itself or resolve its own contradiction? For whom would it be undermined or resolved?

Building on these conceptual questions, the second part of this conference will investigate green capitalism as an emergent phenomenon and as an accumulation regime in the making. Beyond theoretically deducing an ‘ecological contradiction’ of the capitalist mode of production, our goal here is to analyze actually existing forms of green capitalism, regardless of whether they are actually compatible with ecological sustainability. Anticipating the contemporary debate, O’Connor outlined a scenario in which “the destruction of the environment” would “lead to vast new industries designed to restore it.” The hypothesis of green capitalism is that the various efforts to ecologically modernize society have become a source of profit generation and capital accumulation––the counter thesis argues that those will necessarily run into problems of profitability. How can the paradox be understood that green capitalism is expected to fail in theory, while it has been taking shape in reality, in differing forms, to various extents and under different policy labels over the last decades? We are particularly interested in contributions which analyze the empirical phenomenon of green capitalism––its scope, character, and form––in light of one of the following dimensions:

·      Moment of transition: How does a green capitalism develop from the existing social and material relations? How is the phasing out of non-sustainable economic action and possible capital devaluation (‘stranded assets’) managed? How is the risk and insecurity inherent in a moment of transition managed? How are robust expectations, profitability and market stability ensured?

·      Role of the state: How are green markets established and what are the demands on state capacity? What are the conflicts of interest between different economic sectors, fractions of capital and the state? Is ecological Marxism suited to analyze not only the destruction of ecosystems, but also the complex articulations between state intervention, fiscal policies, investment dynamics, green restructuring and new sites of class conflict? In what sense does the capitalist state act as an “interface between capital and nature” (O’Connor)?

·      Green capitalism and capitalist contradictions: How does green capitalism profit from contradictions, and how does it intensify other––spatial, social, or natural––contradictions? Are we witnessing the emergence of a new regime of accumulation, with new institutions, technologies, or modes of regulation––and new capitalist fractions? Or is green capitalism not an autonomous regime, but a mere moment of a finance- and technology-led economy?

We hope the conference can shed light on the challenges of ecological Marxism today and on the paradoxical phenomenon of green capitalism.

Program

Green Capitalism – A New Regime of Accumulation?

November 29–30, 2024

HU Grimm Zentrum Auditorium, Geschwister-Scholl-Straße 1-3, Berlin

Friday, November 29, 2024

09:00 Doors Open

9:15-9:30 Welcome and Introduction by the Organizers 

Cannelle Gignoux and Daniela Russ

09:30-11:00 Critical Perspective on Eco-Marxism I: Limits, Rifts, Metabolism

Bernardo Barzana (Northwestern/Potsdam): The Limits of Natural Limits: On the Normative Foundations of the Metabolic Rift

Killian Favier (Dublin): Materialist Hubris in Eco-Marxism.

Manuela Santamaría-Moncada (IfS Goethe-Universität/Universidad de Antioquia): Metabolism, Metabolic Shifts, and Nature-Society Dialectic: An Adornian
Perspective on Environmental Sociology

Chair: Cannelle Gignoux (CMB Berlin/University Paris 8)

11:00-11:30 Break

11:30-13:00 Critical Perspective on Eco-Marxism II: Nature, Labor, Capital

Rose Troll (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt): Reproductive Labor as Mediator

Miriam Boyer (HU Berlin): A Critical Assessment of the ‘Real Subsumption of  Nature’ Argument

Jan Overwijk (IfS Goethe-Universität): Refusing Externalities: The Eccentricity of Labor-Power

Burç Köstem (University of Southern California): Techniques of Limitation: Communism, Transition and Eco-technical Struggles

Chair: Gauthier Delozière (CMB Berlin/Sciences Po Paris)

13:00-14:00 Lunch

14:00-15:30 Towards a Theory of Green Capitalism 

David Karas (CEU Democracy Institute): A Regulationist Perspective on Varieties of Green Capitalisms

Jan Gilles/Johannes Hollenhorst (LSE): Canning Capitalism: How Net-Zero Technologies extend the Past into the Future

Alyssa Battistoni (Barnard): Political Dimensions of Green Capitalism 

Chair: Hans Rackwitz (IfS Frankfurt)

15:30-15:45 Break

15:45-17:15 Conceptualizing the Green State

Nina Schlosser (Berlin School of Economics and Law/University of Vienna): The Green State as a Radical Revolutionist? Contradictions, Conflicts, and Continuities in the Chilean Lithium Sector

Elias König (Twente): Green Capitalism as Post-Carbon Technocracy: Three Theses

Philip Köncke (Erfurt): State Capitalism Goes Green: On The (Geo-)Political Economy of China’s Rise in Renewable Energy

Chair: Marius Bickhardt (CMB Berlin/Sciences Po Paris)

17:15-17:45 Break

17:45-19:00 Keynote:  Green Extractivism: A New Regime of Appropriation?  

                                          Thea Riofrancos (Providence)

     Chair: Jacob Blumenfeld (Centre for Social Critique, HU)

Saturday, November 30, 2024

09:00- Doors Open

9:15-9:30: Welcome and Introduction by the Organizers 

Hans Rackwitz and Marius Bickhardt

09:30-11:00 The Political Economy of Carbon

Florian Skelton (Zurich): From Rent to Profit: The Expanding Commodity Frontier of Carbon

Marko Mann (Geneva): Carbon Capture and Storage: The Cost and Coordination Motives Behind State Involvement. 

Kiri Santer (Bern): Market-based Governance in the Carbon Era

Johannes Fehrle (HU Berlin): Carbon Offsetting as a Green Capitalist Business Venture

Chair: Daniela Russ (Leipzig)

11:00-11:30 Break

11:30-13:00 Labor Struggles in the Green Transition

Luke Neal (Sheffield): Labour, Materials and the Circular Economy: Ecological Contradictions of the North Sea Wind Industry

Jasper Finkeldey (Halle): Heavy Industries and Green Capitalism: A Love-Hate Relationship

Lili Vanko (CEU): Under a Green Guise: A New Wave of Restructuring and Accumulation in Lusatia

Rocio Hiraldo Lopez-Alonso (Sevilla): Spain’s “transition” as a class process

Chair: Stephan Humbert (Göttingen)

11:30-13:00 Industrial Decarbonization and the State (Unter den Linden 6: 2249A)

John Szabó (CERS/DIW Berlin): Electricity and Hydrogen: Different Democratising Potential in Green Capitalism?

Stephan Stuckmann (MPIfG): Negotiating Industrial Decarbonization – State-Industry Relations and the Role of Sectoral Production Structures

Lasse Thiele (Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie): “Green” capitalism’s geopolitical turn: Hydrogen

Chair: Rabea Berfelde (Center for Social Critique, HU)

13:00-14:00 Lunch

14:00-15:30 (Post)Extractivist Regimes

Lela Rekhviashviki (Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography): Green Capitalism in the Periphery: The Making of a Green Extractivist Regime

Youssef Al Bouchi (UBC): Green Extractivism and illusions of sustainable development, Lithium in Bolivia

Alie Hermanutz (York University): Externalizing Fossil Capitalist Liabilities in Alberta’s Hydrocarbon Economies

Chair: Thea Riofrancos (Providence)

14:00-15:30 Green State Regulations and Ideologies (Unter den Linden 6: 2249A)

Guy Crawford (UCL/Warwick): Capital Accumulation and Environmental Compensation: The State as Socio-Natural Relation

Victoria Myznikova (LMU Munich): Paint it Green: Russian ‘Political Capitalists’ in the Race for Lithium

Julian Germann (Sussex), Lucia Barcena (TNI) [Mads Barbesgaard, Lund]: Green Ambitions, Structural Realities: Capital, the State, and the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Strategy

Isabel Oakes (Oxford): Idyllischer Gartenzwergkapitalismus: A Distinct Ordoliberal Environmental Framework?

Chair: Stephan Stuckmann (MPIfG)

15:30-16:00 Break

16:00-17:30 Finance for Green Capital 

Vicky Kluzik (Goethe University Frankfurt): Nature after Economics: The Anatomy of Biosolutionism, or: How to Make Nature Investable

Edoardo Esposto (Sapienza Università di Roma) [Tiziana Nupieri, Guilia Salaris]: Sustainable Financial Development? The Role of Finance in Shaping the Green Accumulation Regime.

Max Willems (MPIfG): Transition Treaties: Project Finance and the New Green De-risking Infrastructures.

Jens Christiansen (Lund): State-as-market, market-as-governor: How the financialization of nature embeds public finance within market-based environmental governance.

Chair: Hans Rackwitz (IfS Frankfurt)

17:30-17:45 Break

17:45-19:00 Keynote:  Market Failure: Climate Crisis, Green Energy and the  Limits of  Capitalism

Brett Christophers (Uppsala)

Chair: Daniela Russ (Leipzig)

Report

Conference Report: Green Capitalism – A New Regime of Accumulation?

Humboldt University, Berlin – November 29.–30., 2024.

Introduction: Green Capitalism as a Question and a Concept

The conference Green Capitalism: A New Regime of Accumulation? brought together numerous scholars to analyze the emerging configurations of ecological modernization, decarbonization strategies, and green finance through the critical lens of eco-Marxism, regulation theory, and political economy. Framed by James O’Connor’s theory of the “second contradiction” of capitalism — the ecological limits that threaten its own conditions of production — the conference’s central provocation was not merely whether green capitalism is possible, but what it means to name the current conjuncture as such. Does the proliferation of net-zero industrial policies, green financial instruments, and environmental governance mechanisms herald a new regime of accumulation? Or are we witnessing a continuity in capitalist reproduction strategies, now rebranded in green hues? These questions animated two days of rigorous and diverse debate, spanning philosophical reflections on nature, metabolism, and limits, to empirical analyses of lithium extraction, hydrogen strategies, and EU industrial planning.

Critical Perspectives on Eco-Marxism: Metabolism, Nature, Labor

Bernardo Bárzana opened with a critical genealogy of the metabolic rift concept, questioning its philosophical and normative coherence. Rather than asserting a rupture between infinite capital and finite nature, he traced how the rift thesis became a normative anchor in Western Marxism, often reifying nature as a closed system. While engaging Kohei Saito’s critique of Western Marxism’s neglect of nature, Bárzana questioned whether Saito’s own emphasis on “natural limits” risks reintroducing a metaphysical stance. He advocated instead for a reflexive historical materialism that views nature as elastic and relational, calling for a deeper inquiry into the conceptual grounds of ecological contradiction.

Killian Favier extended this critique by interrogating what he called “materialist hubris” in eco-Marxist thought — the tendency to treat nature as passive matter shaped by human activity. Through a close reading of Marx, Favier argued that ecological considerations remain tentative in Marx’s work, and called for a hermeneutic approach that recognizes nature’s ambivalent role as both condition and object of social reproduction. He distinguished ecological materialism, which sees nature as a conditioning domain with potential feedback effects, from approaches like Jason Moore’s, which risk collapsing ecological crises into purely social categories.

Manuela Santamaría-Moncada also criticized dualistic and empiricist uses of metabolism, particularly in John Bellamy Foster’s work. Drawing on Adorno, she challenged both nature-society dualism and Moore’s monist “world ecology,” which she argued obscures contradiction. She proposed instead a dialectical view of metabolism as a historically situated process of co-constitution between nature and society, preserving the tension and negativity essential to critical theory.

The second panel explored labor, reproduction, and externality. Rose Troll criticized the dominant ecofeminist tendency to analogize women’s reproductive labor with natural processes. Drawing on historical materialism, she argued that reproductive labor is not external to production but integral to the gendered organization of capitalist valorization. Rather than a life-affirming alternative, it is embedded in extraction and invisibilization. Troll emphasized the need to foreground the patriarchal division of labor — as theorized by Federici’s “patriarchy of the wage” — as central to the metabolism of capital and nature.

Miriam Boyer challenged the uncritical use of the “real subsumption of nature” thesis, which she argued improperly maps Marx’s labor categories onto ecological processes. This often hinges on technological developments like genetic engineering without addressing their socio-historical context. Boyer warned that without a transformation in the social form of production, these changes do not amount to real subsumption, and such usage risks reinforcing ecomodernist narratives.

Jan Overwijk offered a philosophical account of labor-power as an “eccentric commodity,” shaped by both thermodynamic and economic logics. Drawing on Marx and von Helmholtz, he argued that labor embodies and exceeds ecological limits, revealing a key contradiction in capitalist value production: while value cannot be reduced to energy flows, it also cannot be detached from them. Capital exploits labor-power by extracting surplus from the gap between its ecological use-value and exchange-value. Yet this transformation is not linear; value arises from political struggle over this relation. Labor’s dual role — as ecological force and political agent — complicates any green capitalism and reveals a core ecological tension in Marx’s thought.

Theorizing Green Capitalism: Regulation, Temporality, Contradiction

The afternoon panels moved from the abstract to the concrete and examined whether current shifts in energy, industry, and finance can be theorized as constitutive of a new regime of accumulation.

David Karas used regulation theory to analyze the shift from neoliberal climate governance to liberal green industrial policies (LGIPs) like the EU’s Green Deal and the IRA. He argued these do not constitute a coherent new regime but a transitional phase experimenting with accumulation strategies. Aimed at stabilizing capitalism through centrist coalitions of state, capital, and labor, LGIPs have failed to deliver stable growth or lasting alliances. By 2024, Karas noted, they were giving way to securitized strategies rooted in critical minerals, defense policy, and fiscal tools — signaling a pivot from green capitalism to a geoeconomic, post-green growth regime.

Jan Gilles and Johannes Hollenhorst introduced “canning capitalism” to describe how carbon capture technologies preserve fossil capital’s value by deferring decarbonization. CCS and CDR schemes act as temporal fixes, maintaining profitability through speculative management of carbon liabilities. Case studies like Scotland’s Acorn project showed how these technologies delay transformation, reframe risk, and shift costs without reducing emissions, creating tensions between material production and political cost allocation.

Alyssa Battistoni revisited James O’Connor’s “second contradiction,” analyzing the state’s mediating role between capital and nature. She identified infrastructure management, crisis response, and commodity regulation as key state functions, but asked why states fail to act decisively. She answered that climate change may not yet threaten accumulation, and states are structurally incapable of long-term planning. Citing Sullivan and Tooze, she argued that green capitalism should be reframed as a geopolitical rivalry, pushing climate policy into nationalist and militarized directions — a convergence of Climate Leviathan and Behemoth that complicates left strategies for engaging the state.

Conceptualizing the Green State: China, Chile, Technocracy

The panel on the green state explored how green capitalism is shaped by imperial, technocratic, and geopolitical dynamics. Nina Schlosser analyzed Chile’s lithium sector, introducing the “eco-capitalist state” as a racialized and extractive formation. Drawing on Poulantzas and Gramsci, she showed how institutions like CORFO and participatory “mesas multiactor” co-opt dissent to uphold a fragile “lithium consensus.” Despite progressive rhetoric, the Chilean state facilitates green accumulation by displacing ecological and social costs onto Indigenous and peripheral communities.

Elias König described China’s model as “post-carbon technocracy,” rooted in a history of technoscientific governance. Rather than relying on democratic legitimacy, China’s green capitalism emphasizes planning, control, and energy autarky. König contrasted this with carbon democracies, arguing China stabilizes accumulation through infrastructural dominance and depoliticized sustainability — exposing the authoritarian character of its green developmentalism.

Philipp Köncke examined China’s wind and solar industries as forms of green state capitalism. While state-led policies built global renewable giants, this growth coexists with expanding coal dependence. Recent liberalizing reforms have introduced market volatility, while China’s dominance in renewables has triggered EU protectionism. Köncke argued this model externalizes ecological costs and deepens global competition, complicating hopes for a just multipolar green transition.

Green Extractivism and the Global Political Economy

Thea Riofrancos’ keynote offered a powerful synthesis of the conference’s themes through a critique of green extractivism, arguing that the energy transition entails not merely a shift in energy sources but the rise of a new regime of appropriation centered on critical mineral extraction. She defined green extractivism as both the material basis of transition technologies and the broader greenwashing of extractive industries, showing how “green” capitalism reproduces the territorial expansion, boom-bust cycles, and unequal exchange of earlier extractive regimes.

However, Riofrancos emphasized that this is not simple continuity. Today’s green extractivism reflects new contradictions and shifting geographies, shaped by state-led industrial policy in the Global North and renewed resource nationalism in the Global South. Tensions emerge between planetary climate goals and local ecosystem destruction, onshoring and dependency, and security statecraft versus corporate power.

She utilized the concept of the “security-sustainability nexus” to describe how green industrial strategies are increasingly intertwined with geopolitical rivalry, especially among the US, EU, and China. Yet this opens space for struggle. Across old and new mining frontiers — from Chile to Serbia — transnational resistance is growing, led by Indigenous, peasant, labor, and environmental movements. Alliances like the “Supply Chain Solidarity” tour point to a “planetary mine” as both metaphor and battleground for grassroots environmental governance.

Riofrancos concluded by calling for ecosocialist alternatives rooted in public ownership, democratic planning, and the rights of nature. The contradictions of green extractivism, she argued, are not merely obstacles — they are openings for transformation, if we organize through them.

Carbon Governance and Market Contradictions

The second day opened with a panel on the political economy of carbon governance, focusing on carbon capture, offsetting, and emissions trading.

Florian Skelton examined the commodity form of carbon, arguing that most offsets function not as labor-produced commodities but as “climate rent” — rights to emit valued through state allocation and atmospheric control. He distinguished between avoidance, reduction, and removal offsets, noting that most activity occurs in the “sphere of circulation” and generates rent, not profit. However, removal technologies like direct air capture could, in theory, become sites of real accumulation. Skelton highlighted the rise of “carbon labour” — professionals who manage offset markets — yet questioned whether such markets truly support green capitalism or simply manage its contradictions.

Johannes Fehrle theorized carbon farming as “post-extractivist extractivism,” showing how soil and biomass are commodified through measurement and crediting processes. While marketed as sustainable, this model extends extractive logics by capitalizing ecological functions for global markets, reinventing extractivism under a green guise.

Kiri Santer presented a detailed study of carbon pricing in Europe’s steel and aluminum sectors. Based on interviews and fieldwork, she argued that the EU ETS and CBAM create uncertainty and path dependencies, limiting firms’ capacity to decarbonize without state support. Market mechanisms alone, she showed, are insufficient — firms increasingly rely on public guarantees, subsidies, and techno-political coordination.

Marko Mann analyzed how Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) is promoted in France and the EU. Framed as essential for decarbonization, CCUS largely functions to protect fossil capital from asset stranding. Its rollout depends heavily on state de-risking and coordination, benefiting incumbent polluters and embedding a high-risk, low-control model of transition.

Together, the panel highlighted how carbon commodification is uneven, speculative, and deeply reliant on the state — laying bare the contradictions at the heart of green capitalism.

Labor, Class, and the Contradictions of Green Transition

This panel explored how the ecological transition is reshaping class relations, labor regimes, and industrial strategies across different contexts.

Rocío Hiraldo analyzed Spain’s rapid energy transition (2018–2022), during which coal plants closed and renewables surged. She identified three class “spaces”: (1) green job “recovery” zones marked by labor precarity, (2) “ruins” of deindustrialization, and (3) “sacrifice zones” subject to land enclosures with little labor inclusion. The top-down transition fragmented working-class responses, prompting her call to theorize energy shifts as class processes.

Jasper Finkeldey examined the green steel sector’s contradictions. Green steel is critical to decarbonization but suffers from underinvestment, weak technologies, and waning union influence. Framing it as “green industrial capitalism in the making,” he argued that the sector requires strong public planning, as market logics alone cannot deliver transformation.

Luke Neal focused on the North Sea offshore wind industry, where sustainability is increasingly commodified. Circular economy metrics now shape competition, but high precarity and instability persist in blade manufacturing. Neal urged centering labor in green transition debates — not just what is made, but how and by whom.

Lili Vanko presented on Lusatia, a post-coal region in Germany undergoing uneven decarbonization. She showed how the state’s green planning coexists with marginalization, while far-right actors exploit worker resentment. Workers face not just job loss but symbolic erasure, highlighting tensions between technocratic optimism and class realities.

Together, the panel emphasized that green capitalism is not just about technology and finance, but about how labor, class, and inequality are restructured in the name of sustainability.

Industrial Decarbonization and the State

This panel explored how state institutions, sectoral dynamics, and geopolitics shape industrial decarbonization, with a focus on hydrogen, electricity, and hard-to-abate sectors.

Lasse Thiele analyzed hydrogen as a case of green capitalism’s “geopolitical turn.” Though touted as a decarbonization solution, the sector is still dominated by fossil gas corporations, and much “low-carbon” hydrogen remains emissions-intensive. Thiele described hydrogen as a “temporal smokescreen” that legitimates current emissions by promising future breakthroughs. Yet major public investments (e.g., EU Hydrogen Bank, IRA subsidies) mark a shift from market liberalism to state-led industrial policy tied to energy security and geopolitical rivalry. Hydrogen thus embodies both continuity with fossil capital and a new role for the state.

Stephan Stuckmann compared decarbonization in Germany’s steel and chemical industries. Steel benefits from a clearer technological path and major state subsidies, while the chemical sector lacks alternatives to fossil feedstocks and faces limited restructuring incentives. He argued that successful industrial decarbonization depends not only on fiscal resources but also on regulatory and coordinative capacity, which varies by sector and institutional context.

John Szabo offered a theoretical comparison of electricity and hydrogen transitions through the lens of energy materiality and political power. Electricity liberalization has enabled new actors but outsourced costs, whereas hydrogen remains under the control of fossil incumbents with little redistribution. Szabo warned that hydrogen’s path risks reinforcing fossil modernization, while electricity offers more space for democratic engagement and contestation.

Together, the panel showed that industrial decarbonization is a political process shaped by state power, sectoral structures, and global inequalities — not just technological solutions.

Post-Extractivist Regimes and Peripheral Green Capitalism

This panel examined how green capitalism reshapes extractivism in peripheral and semi-peripheral regions, intensifying socio-ecological contradictions under the guise of climate transition.

Lela Rekhviashvili analyzed Georgia’s transformation into a “green extractivist regime,” where hydropower projects and energy infrastructure serve foreign capital while displacing local communities. Projects like Namakhvani HPP, backed by derisking mechanisms and authoritarian governance, reveal how decarbonization infrastructures externalize costs and reproduce colonial dynamics. Georgia’s role as a green energy transit hub, including EU-facing cable projects and crypto-mining, deepens inequalities between non-carbonized local populations and carbon-intensive elites.

Alie Hermanutz focused on Alberta’s “orphaned” fossil infrastructure, where abandoned oil and gas wells become public and environmental liabilities. They introduced “orphaning” as a process of corporate abandonment, managed by entities like the Orphan Well Association that socialize cleanup costs while enabling fossil capital’s survival. This abandonment, disproportionately impacting First Nations, now underpins a new round of greenwashed investment in CO₂ storage — where cleanup becomes justification for continued extraction.

Youssef Al Bouchi explored Bolivia’s lithium nationalization, showing how state-led extractivism under Morales failed to fulfill ecosocialist aims. Lithium commodification disrupted Indigenous livelihoods, sparked intra-community conflicts, and reinforced foreign dependency despite national ownership. Al Bouchi emphasized that green extractivism reproduces hierarchies, reconfigures state power, and retools accumulation around “critical” minerals.

Together, the panel showed that green capitalism often intensifies extractive dynamics in the periphery, reproducing sacrifice zones and inequality beneath the banner of sustainability.

Green State Ideologies and Regulatory Strategies

This panel examined how the ideologies and practices of green statehood shape industrial policy and environmental governance, highlighting how regulatory frameworks often entrench capitalist power rather than transform it.

Victoria Myznikova analyzed Russia’s entry into green industries through state-led lithium projects. She argued that Russian elites — traditionally fossil-fuel reliant — are adapting to global shifts not through ecological conviction, but via a geopolitically strategic “security-sustainability nexus.” Using the concept of “political capitalism,” she showed how green policy serves to reposition Russia in the global economy without breaking from fossil dependencies.

In a paper written together with Mads Barbesgaard and Lucia Barcena, Julian Germann presented a structural critique of the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA). Focusing on niobium, he argued that the EU’s green industrial agenda is driven more by supply chain security and competitiveness than ecological goals. Most niobium still serves fossil and military uses, revealing how green rhetoric masks deeper continuity with carbon-intensive accumulation.

Guy Crawford examined Colombia’s biodiversity offsetting policy, showing how the state mediates between degradation and accumulation. Offsets, framed as “no net loss,” often legitimize ongoing destruction. Crawford described Colombia’s model as “flexible environmental statehood,” where the state delegates enforcement to private actors and INGOs, while shielding extractive interests.

Isabel Oakes explored how German ordoliberalism shapes green capitalism through legalism, technocracy, and individual ecological responsibility. She argued that this ideological framework disciplines markets while limiting redistributive ambitions, embedding green policy in longstanding conservative economic imaginaries.

Together, the panel highlighted that green state strategies are shaped by entrenched institutional legacies and class interests — from militarized supply chains to technocratic conservatism — revealing the political contradictions at the heart of green capitalism.

Green Finance, Risk, and the Role of the State

This panel explored how financial markets, public policy, and environmental governance intersect in green finance, questioning whether it signals a new mode of accumulation or a repackaging of old logics.

Jens Christiansen reframed green financial instruments — like emissions trading and biodiversity offsets — as forms of “embedded and contested public finance.” Rather than autonomous markets, these tools are shaped by state fiscal policy and technocratic governance. He described this as “budgetary bricolage,” where states use financial instruments to enable green accumulation under austerity without structural change, reinforcing speculative logics and favoring certain capital factions.

Max Willems analyzed Europe’s evolving renewable energy finance regime, highlighting the rise of “green de-risking infrastructures.” As states shift from direct funding to enabling private investment, project finance tools and Special Purpose Vehicles dominate. This hybrid model concentrates market power among utilities, development banks, and Big Tech, weakening decentralized ownership and deepening inequalities in green capitalism’s financial architecture.

Vicky Kluzik introduced “biosolutionism” to describe how ecological crises are governed through techno-economic rationalities. She traced how nature becomes calculable, governable, and investable — culminating in speculative financial strategies like green bonds and conservation finance. In this model, ecological value is derived not from biophysical limits, but from its role in future-oriented asset regimes.

Together, the panel argued that green finance is not a neutral solution to ecological crises, but a new frontier of accumulation shaped by fiscal governance, market concentration, and speculative ideology.

Market Failure: Climate Crisis, Green Energy and the Limits of Capitalism

In the final keynote, Brett Christophers examined the structural limits of green capitalism, focusing on the global electricity transition. While electricity is central to decarbonization — both as the largest source of emissions and as the foundation for electrifying transport, heating, and industry — fossil-based generation continues to grow alongside renewables, unable to keep pace with rising global demand.

Christophers challenged the view that regulatory delays or political resistance are the main barriers. Instead, he identified a profitability crisis: although solar and wind now match fossil fuels in cost, they remain unattractive to private capital due to low, volatile returns and long asset lifespans. Most countries rely on private investment to build renewable infrastructure, but the economic model is flawed — especially outside China, where states hesitate to take ownership or bear the financial risk.

He also highlighted stark global inequalities. The Global South faces higher capital costs and rising energy demand, yet remains sidelined in transition narratives. Without addressing the structural unprofitability of renewables, especially in these regions, energy transition goals will remain out of reach.

Christophers concluded that green capitalism is not just a contradiction but a concrete regime with distinct limits, actors, and logics. To move forward, the political economy of investment and ownership must be confronted — not just the technical cost of clean energy. His critique echoed many conference themes, framing green capitalism as a contested terrain of hybrid strategies, uneven development, and persistent contradictions.

Conclusions and Questions

The conference attempted to renew eco-Marxist analysis in light of current debates on decarbonization. It followed a thread from Marx’s insight into the temporal contradiction between the rapid pace of capitalist accumulation and the slower rhythms of biogeochemical processes such as soil fertility, through James O’Connor’s reworking of crisis theory via the „second contradiction“ — where capital undermines its own natural conditions of production — to Thea Riofrancos’s analysis of the tensions between the imperatives of climate cooperation, the geopolitical rivalries surrounding critical minerals, and the friction between national security politics and the interests of transnational capital. Across philosophy, geopolitics, and political economy, this framework of capital’s ecological contradiction emerges as a central and enduring contribution of eco-Marxist thought.

A critical question that repeatedly arose was the extent to which green capitalist transitions represent a continuity or a rupture within the broader trajectory of capitalism. Green capitalism was characterized as inherently hybrid: not purely green, not exclusively fossil, but interwoven through mechanisms such as net-zero accounting frameworks. This hybridity allows green investments to sustain and prolong fossil-fuel-based systems, with carbon removal technologies supporting a high-emissions status quo.

Another key theme was how green capitalism operates as a mechanism for restructuring imperial and geopolitical domination. Conference discussions underscored the centrality of supply chain security, resource access, and trade logistics, revealing how green transitions are embedded in broader dynamics of interstate competition and control.

The conference also offered a tentative periodization of green capitalist strategies. Over the past decades, a shift has occurred — from market-based approaches (e.g., carbon pricing, emissions trading, and internalizing externalities as solutions to “market failures”) to more interventionist green industrial policies, especially as trade tensions with China intensified. Alyssa Battistoni described this transformation as the greening of the “Climate Behemoth,” marking the rise of economic nationalism as the dominant mode of climate politics. This dynamic was aptly summarized by keynote speaker Thea Riofrancos as the „security-sustainability nexus.“

In this process, capitalist states have evolved from “regulatory states” to developmental states that actively shape industrial and energy pathways. These shifts have profound implications not only for the state, but also for labor relations, the coordination of finance and industry, capitalist competition, and geopolitical alignments. The conference thus helped clarify the stakes of a political economy of green capitalism, deepening eco-Marxist critiques while advancing a broader theoretical framework.

One conclusion that emerged is that so-called “green modernization” should be understood as a green-brown hybrid, characterized by the structural co-dependence of renewable energy deployment and continued fossil fuel expansion. This dynamic is exemplified by the reliance of fossil capital on carbon removal technologies, which are now central to net-zero pathways and underwritten by state-led de-risking mechanisms such as the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). In this light, the age of greenwashing — centered on behavioral nudging and carbon footprints — appears to be giving way to a more materially grounded phase of green capitalism, structured by real investment, state coordination, and geopolitical rivalry. But this phase, too, remains fragile: as the Trumpist rollback signals, fossil interests are reasserting dominance even within transition frameworks.

What remains is a strategic question: can these contradictions be politicized in a way that opens up space for alternatives? If green capitalism is indeed a real form of geo-political crisis management, albeit currently blocked, then the task is not only to criticize its foundations, but to envision a different way forward.

Marius Bickhardt, Jacob Blumenfeld, Gauthier Delozière, Cannelle Gignoux, Hans Rackwitz, and Daniela Russ, April 2025

Organisers

The conference is organized by Marius Bickhardt (Sciences Po Paris/CMB Berlin), Jacob Blumenfeld (Universität Oldenburg/Center for Social Critique, HU Berlin), Gauthier Delozière (Sciences Po Paris/CMB Berlin), Cannelle Gignoux (Université Paris 8/CMB Berlin), Hans Rackwitz (Universität Jena/Leipzig), Daniela Russ (Universität Leipzig) with funding from Centre Marc Bloch, the Centre for Social Critique at Humboldt University Berlin, and the Global and European Studies Institute at the University of Leipzig.

Keynote speakers

Brett Christophers is professor of human geography at Uppsala University’s Institute for Housing and Urban Research. He is the author of The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet (Verso, 2024); Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World (Verso, 2023); Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It (Verso, 2020); The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain (Verso, 2018).