Empowering Rural Communities: Bioenergy for Energy Democracy and Prosumer Engagement

Abstract

In preparation for the forthcoming climate crisis, cities have been understood as the rational scale of action. However, urban-driven political frameworks and social agendas to expand renewable energy generation can inadvertently disrupt the social and physical territoriality of the rural. Photovoltaics has emerged widely as a result, and its visceral expansion has displaced rural farmers, of which 50 percent are tenants. The thesis proposes a physical manifestation of an energy democracy where rural farmers are incorporated into the energy regime as “prosumers” by reshaping the socioeconomic structure of the rural. The project uses Yongji-myeon, South Korea, as a case owing to its vulnerability to photovoltaic intervention. The final product is an infrastructural landscape design that transforms rural farmers into bioenergy producers. It envisions reengineering the agriculturally monochrome economy into an energy landscape with a socioeconomic reconfiguration of marginalized populations who are critical participants in the renewable energy regime.