Rubén Vezzoni

Postdoctoral Researcher

As a postdoctoral researcher at UvA, I research the political economy of decarbonising the built environment. I’ve published extensively on different dimensions of the green transition – from energy to agri-food systems – as well as on geopolitics, global environmental governance, and post-growth economics. In 2025, I obtained a doctoral degree from the University of Helsinki with a monograph titled “On Social Change and Ecological Necessity”, which develops an Ecological Political Economy perspective to the study of green transition attempts.

Brief research statement

My current research at UvA investigates the paradoxical increase in the range and/or volume of material consumption caused by decarbonisation efforts. I call this the “re-materialisation hypothesis”. To test this hypothesis, I look into the decarbonisation of the built environment in Europe and analyse material flows, time series, key regulatory frameworks and policy initiatives, as well as investment strategies in buildings and infrastructure. The research aims are twofold. On the one hand, I seek to identify potential tensions, or trade-offs, between the climate agenda and other environmental impacts under current prevailing decarbonisation strategies. On the other hand, the successes and failures of dematerialisation – and accompanying policy tropes like sustainable development and green growth – can reveal useful insights into the global political economy of the current stage of capitalism.

Publications

Vezzoni, R. (2023). Green growth for whom, how and why? The REPowerEU Plan and the inconsistencies of European Union energy policy. Energy Research & Social Science, 101, 103134

Vezzoni, R. (2024a). A “return of the state” in energy transitions? The making of a hydrogen economy in the European Union. ZFW – Advances in Economic Geography, 68(3–4), 195–212

Vezzoni, R. (2024b). How “clean” is the hydrogen economy? Tracing the connections between hydrogen and fossil fuels. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 50, 100817.

Vezzoni, R. (2025a). Farming the sun: the political economy of agrivoltaics in the European Union. Sustainability Science, 20, 1519–1534. 

Vezzoni, R. (2025b). From REPower to ReArm Europe: A Lopsided Geopolitics Foretelling Ecological Breakdown. Intereconomics, 60(6), 323–328.

Vezzoni, R. (2025c). On Social Change and Ecological Necessity: the Ecological Political Economy of Green Transition Attempts in the European Union (Doctoral Dissertation), University of Helsinki, Helsinki.

More publications are available at Google Scholar

Projects