Jhonnatan Fernando Lopez Vega

This project investigates how young people’s lives are changing in a region where education and work relationships increasingly revolve around the adoption of cutting-edge energy projects. The inauguration of the first Technical High School in Renewable Energies –in the “last agrarian frontier” of Colombia and over the basin with the largest oil reserves in the world– coincided with the launch of the first biomass-based electricity generator designed to support an off-the-grid provincial capital. This project investigates how this dual launch exposes a coupling of climate mitigation and vocational education endeavors to shape the youth to participate in such state and market-directed projects. I will analyze: (1) How are youth brought within the scope of energy transition ventures in the Orinoco River watershed; (2) How rural youth confront the challenges of pursuing vocational education in renewable energies while enduring profound and violent socio-ecological transformations related to bioenergy production; (3) How young people’s postgraduate aspirations and work experiences mediate and possibly drive the direction of these state projects. This research brings together conversations in the anthropology of energy, education, and work to focus on the experiences of rural youth, aiming to expand anthropology’s understanding of collective future-making possibilities on a heating planet.