PhD Dissertation Defense: Dipa Desai
Date/Time: Wed, Aug 19th, 2026 at 1:00 pm (ET)
Location: Zoom (for Zoom access, email [email protected])
Title: “Overcoming Corporate Gaslighting: Fossil Fuel Power and the So-Called Energy Transition”
Abstract:
As climate crisis gets worse, the need for a just energy transition away from fossil fuels toward more renewable-based futures is increasingly urgent. Despite growth in renewable energy deployment, fossil fuel extraction and reliance continues to expand, raising questions about whether the “so-called energy transition” is even occurring. Powerful, fossil fuel interests are influencing whether, how, and when global climate and energy transition goals are achieved. However, relatively little is known about how fossil fuel energy sector incumbents are strategically engaging with the policies designed for renewable energy transition and fossil fuel phaseout. This dissertation analyses how fossil fuel interests are impacting the global energy transition. A mixed methods approach is used to analyze the discursive, legal, socio-political, and infrastructural barriers and opportunities for fossil fuel phaseout, through three related research studies focused on different scales of action.
The research combines data from the largest fossil fuel companies’ corporate annual reports; review of state, municipal, industry, and other formally adopted policies and informally practiced rules in the energy transition; and ethnographic observations and interviews of energy and climate stakeholders involved in the transition of a progressive state in the US. Discourse analysis was applied to corporate annual report data to understand 1) how fossil fuel companies frame the potential of renewable energy in their public communications. Legal distributional analysis and institutional development analysis were applied to interview, ethnographic, and policy review data to understand 2) what rules hinder gas phaseout in a state with the strongest energy transition policies in the country, and how some actors use rules and regulatory gaps to delay gas phaseout, as well as 3) how different factors of the policy context interact to impact a geothermal network energy demonstration project, and what happens to renewable energy project outcomes when a gas utility leads implementation in a progressive state like Massachusetts.
Results demonstrated that incumbent fossil fuel actors are strategically influencing the energy transition at multiple scales using several, different mechanisms. Findings reveal how fossil fuel companies to apply discourses, capitalize on shifting political-economic conditions and regulatory gaps, and integrate fossil fuel and renewable energy infrastructure to delay system transition and fossil fuel phaseout.
The dissertation reveals that fossil fuel power weakens and transforms energy transition action into an energy addition where fossil fuels like gas are maintained with renewable energy. As a result, this research questions if a “so-called energy transition” is underway. This research contributes new knowledge about strategies used by fossil fuel actors to delay fossil gas phaseout and explores the alternatives of building public, renewable power. The dissertation provides key recommendations to disrupt fossil fuel power and help communities advance a renewable energy transition, and suggests some future research areas to further understand the role of incumbent fossil fuel actors and institutions in climate and energy actions.
Committee Members:
Prof. Kaitlyn Alvarez Noli, School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, Northeastern University (Chair)
Prof. Dan Danielsen, School of Law, Northeastern University
Prof. Jennie C. Stephens, Maynooth University