Empowered futures conference 2026: Controversies of energy transitions in an age of crises and opportunities
As preparedness concerns reshape energy policy and planning, difficult questions are emerging about sustainability, justice and competing priorities. Join researchers, policymakers and practitioners for a day of discussion on the challenges and opportunities shaping today's energy transitions.
The Empowered Futures Conference 2026 is organised by alumni of Empowered Futures, NMBU's research school on the social and political dimensions of energy transitions. Bringing together researchers, practitioners and policymakers, the conference explores the controversies, challenges and possibilities shaping contemporary energy transitions.
Featuring presentations from current Empowered Futures members and alumni, alongside keynote talks and researcher-practitioner panel discussions, the conference addresses themes including critical minerals and green extractivism, energy justice, state governance, urban climate adaptation, community-led energy initiatives, industrial decarbonisation and the uneven geographies of sustainability transitions.
Join us for a day of dialogue on the power relations, opportunities and trade-offs embedded in energy transitions, while exploring pathways to more just, democratic and socio-ecologically sustainable futures.
The conference is free to attend and includes refreshments and a light lunch.
Registration deadline: 31 October
Conference schedule:
08:30 – 09:00
Breakfast & Registration
Coffee & tea, scones with jam & honey
09:00 – 09:10
Opening Poem by Caroline Buus Ponthieu
09:10 – 09:20
Welcome & Introduction by John Andrew McNeish
09:20 – 10:30
Joint Keynote Session: From resistance to critique?
Gisa Weszkalnys & Anna-Sophie Hobi
Large-scale renewable energy projects embody ambitions to "green" national economies and provide energy security. They are often portrayed as essential to a successful transition away from fossil fuels, framed by imaginaries of sustainability, innovation, and economic opportunity. These projects rarely go unchallenged, however. Activists and affected communities interrogate the shared ground on which dominant energy transition projects are staked. They have questioned the benefits of transition projects in diverse settings, asking who bears their social and ecological costs, whose knowledge counts in decision-making processes, and whose lands and futures are made available in the name of decarbonisation. Instead of strengthening the public good, such projects are frequently seen to sustain an ecologically destructive and socially disruptive drive for economic growth, reinforcing existing inequalities and relations of power.
This keynote aims to push beyond existing accounts of resistance, not by abandoning critical empirical research, but by using it to open new lines of exploration. Drawing on artistic methodologies, Gisa has sought to develop less 'disciplined' forms of intervention – ones that interrogate the diverse modes of sensing and knowing through which people engage energy environments, and, by implication, the conditions of possibility for resistance and critique themselves. Anna-Sophie asks what we might learn from situations in which communities do not resist but actively support proposed large-scale projects in ways that complicate established critical scholarly analysis. How can we build on these insights to develop forms of critique that run both alongside and 'crosswise' the narratives encountered in our fieldwork? If the need for resistance is obvious, what is the point of critique?
Moderator: Mikaela Vasstrøm
10:30 – 10:45
Coffee Break
Leftover scones, fruits, and coffee
10:45 – 12:15
Session 1: Critical Minerals, Extractivism, and Global Transitions
- Green Industrial Development in the Global South: Challenges from the Lithium and Nickel Industries in Chile and Indonesia
Håkon da Silva Hyldmo (Norwegian University of Science & Technology – NTNU) - The Hidden Cost of Green Cities: Aluminium Extraction and Green Colonialism from Norway to Brazil
Karen Waneska de Jesus (Norwegian University of Life Sciences) - Where the Earth Bleeds Light: Sacrificial Geographies and Everyday Struggles for Energy Justice in Zimbabwe's Lithium Frontier
Tafadzwa Maukazuva (University of Stirling) - Challenges to decolonising energy transition mineral supply chains in Kanaky-New Caledoni
Caroline Buus Ponthieu (Norwegian University of Science & Technology – NTNU)
Moderator: Lars Kåre Grimsby (Noragric, NMBU)
12:15 – 13:00
Lunch Break
Seasonal Vegan Soup
13:00 – 13:30
Screening
Altered Landscapes of post-carbon future, Neil Davey
13:30 – 15:00
Session 2: Energy, Communities, and Participation
- How Urban Communities Face the Heat: Insights from Mumbai, India
Sharayu Shejale (University of Geneva) - Stealing from the Wind: Moving from a Corporate-Led to Community-Led Transition in Scotland’s Rural Peripheries
Greg Grant (Norwegian University of Life Sciences) & Erin Rizzato Devlin (Lund University) - Who Can Participate? Distributed Capacity and Energy Transition Controversies in Urban Flexibility Governance
Janina Jasper (University of Stavanger) - State of Charge: From Petrol Stations to Charging Networks: The Spatial Transformation of Norway's Automotive Energy System, 1993-2025
Daniel Molin (University of Oslo)
Moderator: Lara Santos Ayllón
15:15 – 16:25
Closing Panel Discussion
- Gaute Tjensvoll (Fred. Olsen Renewables)
- Lamin Khadar (Statkraft)
- John Andrew McNeish (NMBU)
- Bjørg Miriam Dahle (Sola Kommune)
- Finlay Bain Kerr (University of Strathclyde)
Moderator: Erling Holden
16:25-16:30 Close