Research_

Unsettling resources

Investigating the dependence of our energy use and systems on conventional energy and the global shift to renewables

Exploration, extraction, financing, production, waste, legacies. Attempts to reduce fossil fuel emissions to 1.5 degrees of global warming above pre-industrial levels to meet the 2015 Paris Agreement and limit catastrophic climate change means drastically reducing greenhouse gases and shifting to renewable energy.

We investigate the dependence of our energy use and systems on conventional energy and the global shift to renewables. In doing so, we critically evaluate how fossil fuels continue to be extracted and used, how they are financed, managed, and regulated, and their environmental and social impacts locally, regionally and globally. We question the political and economic viability, and the accountability and justice of current energy use and systems, and how this is being transformed through ‘smarter mining’ of critical minerals for renewable technology.

Contributors: Professor Susan Park, Dr Rebecca Lawrence, Dr Katherine Owens, Dr Madeline Taylor, Gemma Viney, Oliver-Summerfield Ryan, Michelle St Anne, Nathaniel Pelle