The fact that Night City is solar powered is really interesting. If you play the game, the solar panels are visible from afar from many vantage points across the city. And if you visit it, it takes forever to traverse. It’s pre-sense is huge.
What’s so interesting to me is that in spite of the city’s green infrastructure, the inequities persist.
Massive fields of solar panels are centralized in their infrastructure - they have a single outlet onto the electrical grid, they are all maintained and administered in the same way, etc. - so they fit well into a centralized social power structure.
Same as farms for the past 5,000 years.
Decentralization would mean something like rooftop solar and household batteries. But even then the manufacturers could hold centralized power; you would have to be able to mix-and-match between manufacturers in usage and repair.
The key advantage to household solar is that the panels last for decades. So you need to go to the manufacturer maybe two or three times in your life. If you have to fill up your oil powered car, that needs to happen every week or so and the electricity grid can be disconnected with a flick of a switch.
Humans are naturally social animals and we really depend on others. It is mostly about avoiding exploitation. A lot of green technologies do that naturally.