Green electricity, blue innovation and state power on Belgium's offshore commodity frontier

The ongoing expansion of renewable energy goes hand in hand with the opening of new commodity frontiers. While academic literature has historically focused on extractivism enabled by (post-)colonial states in the Global South, the growth of renewables entails a reshoring of these frontiers to the Global North. Using Belgium as case study, we develop two arguments on these emerging manifestations of the relationship between the state and the commodity frontier: (a) we situate wind as a natural resource within a broader complex of entangled “innovative” commodities, and (b) we draw on Jessop's strategic-relational approach to unpack the varied ways state power is exerted in frontier-making. Belgium was an early adopter of offshore windfarms. By 2020, it had the second highest installed offshore wind energy capacity per capita in the world, meeting approximately 10% of its electricity demand. We show how the Belgian offshore frontier got its distinctive form through state interventions in the establishment of control over offshore wind resources and the entangled commodification of green electricity and technical know-how. Our analysis highlights marine spatial planning and the expansion of the electricity grid as key manifestations of the state's territorial power, illustrating the interplay between its discursive, legal-institutional, and infrastructural dimensions. Throughout the analysis, we emphasise that the state is not a singular, unified actor; rather, its interventions emerge from negotiations among diverse social actors exerting power through the state. The Belgian frontier-making process has been contingent on the opportunities created by the convergence of environmental sustainability and economic innovation agendas, whose alignment required careful mediation to sustain broad support for the transformation of marine territory.