Periodic Reporting for period 4 - Worlds of Lithium (A multi-sited and transnational study of transitions towards post-fossil fuel societies)
Reporting period: 2024-08-01 to 2025-07-31
Worlds of Lithium examined how global energy transitions unfold across interconnected sites of extraction, production, and recycling in Chile, China, and Norway. The project started from a crucial observation: while the replacement of fossil fuels with renewable technologies is essential to address climate change, such replacements often reproduce historical inequalities and ecological damage. Lithium—the light metal used in rechargeable batteries—embodies this paradox. It powers decarbonisation while deepening extractive pressures and geopolitical dependencies.
Rather than assuming transitions occur through simple technological substitution, the project investigated how these transformations actually take place, for whom, and at what cost. It analysed how infrastructures of the green economy reconfigure landscapes, labour, and forms of life, and how global goals of sustainability translate into local realities of extraction, production, and recycling.
Three key ideas guided this inquiry:
1. Reducing emissions must also mean reducing omissions. Transitions must confront what they leave out—social displacement, ecological harm, and epistemic silences.
2. Every replacement is also a displacement. Technological substitution reshapes places, livelihoods, and political responsibilities.
3. From sustainability to habitability. Progress should be evaluated not by abstract indicators but by whether specific worlds remain livable for humans and more-than-humans alike.
Through these ideas, Worlds of Lithium reframed the challenge of decarbonisation as a question of planetary habitability rather than technological innovation and geopolitical competitiveness. It concluded that just energy transitions require more than technological change—they demand attention to the social and ecological relations that make such transitions possible.
Rather than assuming transitions occur through simple technological substitution, the project investigated how these transformations actually take place, for whom, and at what cost. It analysed how infrastructures of the green economy reconfigure landscapes, labour, and forms of life, and how global goals of sustainability translate into local realities of extraction, production, and recycling.
Three key ideas guided this inquiry:
1. Reducing emissions must also mean reducing omissions. Transitions must confront what they leave out—social displacement, ecological harm, and epistemic silences.
2. Every replacement is also a displacement. Technological substitution reshapes places, livelihoods, and political responsibilities.
3. From sustainability to habitability. Progress should be evaluated not by abstract indicators but by whether specific worlds remain livable for humans and more-than-humans alike.
Through these ideas, Worlds of Lithium reframed the challenge of decarbonisation as a question of planetary habitability rather than technological innovation and geopolitical competitiveness. It concluded that just energy transitions require more than technological change—they demand attention to the social and ecological relations that make such transitions possible.
Research combined long-term ethnography with interdisciplinary experimentation across the social and natural sciences. Fieldwork in Chile, China, and Norway followed lithium from salt flats and refineries to laboratories and recycling plants, revealing how global energy transitions depend on multiple, unequal sites and scales.
In Chile, the study traced how lithium extraction reconfigures territories and ecologies far beyond the salt flats of the Atacama Desert. It developed the concept of off-sites to describe the hidden infrastructures—ports, refineries, power plants, desalination facilities, and transport corridors—that sustain “green” extraction while remaining invisible in transition policies. These off-sites expose how decarbonisation still depends on fossil fuels, freshwater, and fragile desert ecologies, displacing Indigenous territories and generating new toxic residues. This work continues through the follow-up project Geopolitics of Lithium Off-Sites, which informs public debates on territorial justice and environmental governance in Chile.
In China, the research examined how state-driven ecological modernisation policies link decarbonisation with national energy security and techno-industrial expansion. Electric vehicles were found to reduce urban emissions while reproducing labour precarity, unequal access, and resource dependencies abroad. The analysis revealed that technological replacement can obscure the need for deeper social transformations, showing how the pursuit of green competitiveness often conflicts with ecological and social goals.
In Norway, the study investigated battery recycling and the country’s celebrated “Green Shift.” It showed that circular industries frequently extend rather than replace extractive infrastructures, sometimes encroaching on forests and protected estuaries. Recycling processes depend on materials that are themselves environmentally harmful, while generous incentives for electric cars stimulate rapid consumption and the export of used vehicles whose end-of-life treatment remains opaque. Scientists and engineers called for policies connecting design, production, and recycling—recommendations now reflected in the forthcoming European Battery Passport.
Across these sites, Worlds of Lithium demonstrated that decarbonisation policies often focus narrowly on measurable emissions while omitting the social, ecological, and political relations that sustain them. It developed comparative ethnographies and conceptual tools such as micro-disasters (slow, accumulative forms of ecological degradation) and off-sites (hidden infrastructures of extraction). These concepts now circulate in academic, legal, and environmental domains and inform ongoing policy discussions.
Public engagement was central throughout. The multilingual Lithium Dialogues and China Powers platforms created spaces where scientists, policymakers, and Indigenous and civil-society actors debated the complexities of energy transitions across more than twenty countries. Together, these initiatives fulfilled the project’s commitment to open access and public dissemination.
See https://worldsoflithium.eu/(opens in new window)
In Chile, the study traced how lithium extraction reconfigures territories and ecologies far beyond the salt flats of the Atacama Desert. It developed the concept of off-sites to describe the hidden infrastructures—ports, refineries, power plants, desalination facilities, and transport corridors—that sustain “green” extraction while remaining invisible in transition policies. These off-sites expose how decarbonisation still depends on fossil fuels, freshwater, and fragile desert ecologies, displacing Indigenous territories and generating new toxic residues. This work continues through the follow-up project Geopolitics of Lithium Off-Sites, which informs public debates on territorial justice and environmental governance in Chile.
In China, the research examined how state-driven ecological modernisation policies link decarbonisation with national energy security and techno-industrial expansion. Electric vehicles were found to reduce urban emissions while reproducing labour precarity, unequal access, and resource dependencies abroad. The analysis revealed that technological replacement can obscure the need for deeper social transformations, showing how the pursuit of green competitiveness often conflicts with ecological and social goals.
In Norway, the study investigated battery recycling and the country’s celebrated “Green Shift.” It showed that circular industries frequently extend rather than replace extractive infrastructures, sometimes encroaching on forests and protected estuaries. Recycling processes depend on materials that are themselves environmentally harmful, while generous incentives for electric cars stimulate rapid consumption and the export of used vehicles whose end-of-life treatment remains opaque. Scientists and engineers called for policies connecting design, production, and recycling—recommendations now reflected in the forthcoming European Battery Passport.
Across these sites, Worlds of Lithium demonstrated that decarbonisation policies often focus narrowly on measurable emissions while omitting the social, ecological, and political relations that sustain them. It developed comparative ethnographies and conceptual tools such as micro-disasters (slow, accumulative forms of ecological degradation) and off-sites (hidden infrastructures of extraction). These concepts now circulate in academic, legal, and environmental domains and inform ongoing policy discussions.
Public engagement was central throughout. The multilingual Lithium Dialogues and China Powers platforms created spaces where scientists, policymakers, and Indigenous and civil-society actors debated the complexities of energy transitions across more than twenty countries. Together, these initiatives fulfilled the project’s commitment to open access and public dissemination.
See https://worldsoflithium.eu/(opens in new window)
Worlds of Lithium advanced the anthropology and interdisciplinary study of energy transitions through three main contributions:
1. Conceptual innovation: from emissions to omissions.
The project introduced a new vocabulary—omissions, displacements, habitability, off-sites, micro-disasters—that reveals the blind spots of green transitions. This lexicon challenges the techno-economic logic that defines success solely through emission metrics and redirects attention to what transitions omit or erase.
2. Methodological innovation: interdisciplinary experimentation.
Departing from conventional collaborations, the project created shared experimental spaces where anthropologists, chemists, microbiologists, and environmental scientists jointly redefined research problems. This practice generated hybrid approaches such as toxic stratigraphy and meta-chemistry, which analyse how chemical, historical, and social residues intertwine in energy landscapes.
3. Comparative and transnational understanding of planetary transitions.
By connecting extraction in Chile, production in China, and recycling in Norway, the project revealed how green technologies reproduce geopolitical asymmetries and socio-ecological inequalities across regions. It replaced the narrative of a smooth, global “energy transition” with one of interconnected yet uneven transformations shaped as much by displacement as by innovation.
In doing so, Worlds of Lithium transformed ethnography into a method of conceptual creation and cross-disciplinary collaboration. It demonstrated that responding to climate change requires not only technological solutions but also intellectual and political vigilance: learning to perceive what transitions omit, whom they displace, and what forms of life they make possible or impossible.
Its central message is clear: reducing emissions must also mean reducing omissions.
1. Conceptual innovation: from emissions to omissions.
The project introduced a new vocabulary—omissions, displacements, habitability, off-sites, micro-disasters—that reveals the blind spots of green transitions. This lexicon challenges the techno-economic logic that defines success solely through emission metrics and redirects attention to what transitions omit or erase.
2. Methodological innovation: interdisciplinary experimentation.
Departing from conventional collaborations, the project created shared experimental spaces where anthropologists, chemists, microbiologists, and environmental scientists jointly redefined research problems. This practice generated hybrid approaches such as toxic stratigraphy and meta-chemistry, which analyse how chemical, historical, and social residues intertwine in energy landscapes.
3. Comparative and transnational understanding of planetary transitions.
By connecting extraction in Chile, production in China, and recycling in Norway, the project revealed how green technologies reproduce geopolitical asymmetries and socio-ecological inequalities across regions. It replaced the narrative of a smooth, global “energy transition” with one of interconnected yet uneven transformations shaped as much by displacement as by innovation.
In doing so, Worlds of Lithium transformed ethnography into a method of conceptual creation and cross-disciplinary collaboration. It demonstrated that responding to climate change requires not only technological solutions but also intellectual and political vigilance: learning to perceive what transitions omit, whom they displace, and what forms of life they make possible or impossible.
Its central message is clear: reducing emissions must also mean reducing omissions.