Renewable Energy Technologies (RETs) are often portrayed as inherently just forms of energy production due to their role in climate change mitigation. This paper argues, first and foremost, that this overlooks the contextual struggles associated with renewable energy projects. We do so through critical engagement with an ‘Energy Lifecycle Framework’ approach to understanding claims of energy (in)justice in Oaxaca, Mexico. This framework for energy justice scholarship promises to enable whole systems interpretations related to the potential synergies and manifestations of injustice, existing at stages from resource extraction to waste, as well as opportunities for achieving more holistic forms of justice. Offering the stages of manufacturing and construction as crucial phases of any systemic approach to RETs and discussing the stage of consultation (an obligatory step in Mexico for energy projects in indigenous territories), the paper challenges and questions our ability to generate abstract interpretations of the relationship between energy lifecycles and their associated, contextually grounded, injustices. To do so, we draw upon extensive ethnographic fieldwork around the development of utility-scale wind power (USWP) projects undertaken in Oaxaca, where a number of regional peasant and indigenous groups have led sustained resistance to USWP on the basis of environmental, political and socio-economic impacts. Demonstrating how pre-existent and embedded cultural and environmental relationships determine the way in which energy justice is understood and constructed, the paper demonstrates tension as it simultaneously corroborates the usefulness of the Energy Lifecycle Framework and urges caution towards universalistic and staged approaches to assessing injustices in energy systems.

由于可再生能源技术在缓解气候变化中的作用，因此通常被描述为本质上只是能源生产的形式。本文首先指出，这忽略了与可再生能源项目相关的背景斗争。我们通过与“能源生命周期框架”方法进行批判性合作来理解墨西哥瓦哈卡州关于能源（不公正）主张的做法。能源司法奖学金的这一框架有望实现整个系统的解释，这些解释涉及从资源开采到浪费阶段所存在的潜在的协同增效和不公正表现，以及实现更全面的正义形式的机会。提供制造和建造阶段作为可再生能源技术的任何系统方法的关键阶段，并讨论咨询阶段（墨西哥在土著领土上的能源项目的强制性步骤），论文对我们对这种关系产生抽象解释的能力提出了质疑和质疑。能源生命周期及其相关的，基于上下文的不公正之间的关系。为此，我们围绕在瓦哈卡州开展的公用事业规模风电（USWP）项目的开发，进行了广泛的人种志田野调查，在该项目中，许多地区农民和土著群体在环境，政治和社会的基础上，导致对USWP的持续抵制社会经济影响。