Canada’s Carbon-Capital Elite: A Tangled Web of Corporate Power

This article maps the organization of corporate power within Canada’s carbon-capital elite. It charts the elite’s accumulation base, its internal structure as a network of interlocking directorates and its ties to the financial sector and other segments of corporate capital – national and transnational. The analysis identifies a tightly-knit, local network of mid-sized carbon-capital firms linked into the broader power structure largely through mediating relations that involve the largest carbon-capital corporations. The architecture of corporate power resembles an entrenched oligarchy; however, both policy sociology and public sociology can contribute toward checking its power through effective regulation while facilitating discussion of energy democracy as a transformative alternative.