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In recent years, I have been studying the development of renewable energy in Spain with the aim of developing a better understanding of energy transitions. My research shows that energy transitions are non-linear processes that open possibilities for new social arrangements, but it also highlights the ways that such new social arrangements rework inherited relationships of power. In this paper I want to elaborate on this idea by focusing on the way big electrical corporations have been mobilizing the current context of economic crisis to rewrite energy policy. As a result, these big corporations are able to consolidate and extend into the future their position of control over the energy system, understood here to include not only technologies and resources, but more crucially the social structures and relations of production sustaining their operation (Debeir et al. 1991).

The battle to reform energy policy in Spain must be situated in the broader European field. In October 2013, the CEOs of nine leading Eurozone electrical corporations issued a joint press release advocating for the elimination of subsidies to renewable energy, which they considered to be the main cause behind soaring energy prices. This demand represents little less than a demand for the EU to revise its approach to climate change and renounce its objective of meeting the Kyoto targets set for 2020. Indeed, these corporations argue that respect for the environment should not be achieved at the expense of