An analysis of oil hegemony and the challenges of the energy transition from a political economy perspective

Abstract

This paper analyzes the reasons that led to the hegemony of oil as an energy source and the challenges for the energy transition advocated by broad academic, political and popular sectors. As a methodological framework, it recovers the main elements of political economy such as absolute, relative and extraordinary surplus value, differential, absolute and monopoly rents, prices and production prices to interpret the role of the appropriation of energy in the emergence and consolidation of the capitalist mode of production and the factors and attributes that guided energy transitions and led to the hegemony of oil, within a framework of multiple possibilities of energy resources. It analyzes the geopolitical structure and disputes over income from natural resources, focusing on the control of oil reserves and production, under the coordination of OPEC+ (expanded Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries), with its national companies, in conflict with the interests of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries and China and the independent oil companies. Finally, it presents the table of possibilities for the defossilization of the Brazilian and global energy matrix, through alternatives based on electricity or hydrogen vectors, and analyzes the challenges and impacts for its adoption in the economic, social and political power structure inherent to the capitalist system, whose engine is the accumulation process based on increasing productivity to generate economic surpluses.