While critical nature-society scholarship in geography, sociology, and environmental justice is flush with studies analyzing the motivations, tactics, and outcomes of local initiatives against

waste-to-energy (WTE) facilities, the literature lacks an analysis of 1) the political economic interests that influence and support municipal solid waste’s (MSW) framing as a renewable

energy source; 2) the ways in which discourses of renewability are represented in WTE planning and management, including relations with surrounding communities; and 3) the ways in which

MSW’s spatial distribution, political potential, and material representation influence the production of space. Addressing each of these gaps has important implications beyond WTE

regulation, planning, and management. Illuminating how political economic interests influence scientific knowledge production and application vis-à-vis renewable energy regulation can

inform the development of more scientifically robust and equitable climate change policies, for example the next iteration of the European Union’s Renewable Energy Directive or individual

US states’ Renewable Portfolio Standards, both of which set out the criteria by which different energy sources are rendered eligible for particular types of financial support. Investigating how

discourses of renewability affect local perceptions of infrastructure typically considered undesirable sheds new light on emerging power dynamics embedded in local planning decisions.

This will be increasingly important as large-scale “renewable” energy transition take place. Lastly, showing how MSW’s value is mutable and geographically contingent opens up political

possibilities for both reimagining its role in shaping socially and ecologically just urban spaces. This dissertation is structured in three articles. The first article investigates how political

economic interests drive policy makers, WTE regulators, and WTE industry representatives to adopt particular assertions about waste’s material properties to justify waste’s construction as a

renewable energy source. The second article interrogates whether the framing of waste as a-iiirenewable energy source is evident in local WTE planning and management processes, and what affect this has on local attitudes towards WTE facilities. The third article illuminates the ways in which economic and political elites in three municipalities leverage distinct interpretations of waste to produce particular spatial imaginaries. While each article draws on a different subset of literature, the political ecology of renewable energy transitions provides an overarching

theoretical framework for this study. This framework’s attention to political economic dynamics, politics of knowledge production, biophysical and biochemical processes, and qualitative

methods are particularly instructive.