Workshop: Fair Energy Transitions – The role of technology (will be postponed)

***This meeting was canceled and will be postponed, due to the measures taken to slow down the spread of the Corona virus. A new date will be announced.***

The energy transition towards low carbon and renewable energy sources is challenging us to reshape our assumptions on sustainability towards the environment, economy and society. While we consider what type of energy sources, and more importantly energy systems, are required, more work is needed on whether such systems drive or hinder a just transition – under which conditions, where, how and why. This paper development workshop calls for interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary submissions that offer empirical and conceptual insight into how to develop whole energy systems for a just transition – revealing past, current and future examples from around the world.

The recent emergence, or rather re-emergence, of the concept of “just transition” (Delina and Sovacool 2018, Goddard and Farrely 2018, Healy and Barry 2017, McCauley and Heffron 2018, Heffron and McCauley 2018) is an explicit formal recognition that the global energy transition must adhere to core principles of economic, environmental and social justice, as well as ultimately promote greater senses of fairness and due process. Its central objective positions a right to fair employment at the heart of the transition (Doorey 2017). International agreements such as the UN Silesia declaration at COP 24 Katowice enshrine such commitments. Examples are emerging nationally such as the Green New Deal in the US as formal structures for responding to this transition challenge. More scholarly work is needed to explore what types of energy systems and policy making are needed to ensure a just transition for fair employment, but also more broadly just economies, ecosystems and society.

We invite papers that critically analyse examples of all energy systems, from cradle to grave, integrated systems, large, small, micro and pico scale that have the ambition to lead to a just transition. More specifically, we seek contributions that offer interdisciplinary and cross disciplinary insights from examples found throughout the world. The purpose of the workshop is to examine which types of systems have, can, and or will deliver on core principles of economic, environmental and social justice with a particular focus on their impact on employment rights. The aim of the workshop would therefore be delivering a more comprehensive understanding of the connection between the multiplicity of energy systems and the ways in which it drives or hinders a global just transition.

We aim for a small-scale, intensive workshop with multiple discussants for each paper. Please send your 500 word abstract to the organizers before February 15, 2020.