A Just Transition

Energy Transition & Clean Road Transport

June 2021

Brought to you by Durham Energy Institute, the month of June covers two of the five priorities from the UN Climate Change Conference in 2021; Energy Transition and Clean Road Transport.

Durham academics and industry partners will provide a series of seminars and panel events looking at current research to support the global transition to Net Zero and the domestic decision to move away from thermal vehicles in 2035.

This panel discussion will ask how COP26 can embed justice into the transition to a sustainable, decarbonised world. We will ask about the many levels and meanings of justice, the challenges to achieving real change, and the importance of keeping it on the COP agenda.

Chair: Professor Simone Abram (Department of Anthropology, Durham University & Co Director of Durham Energy Institute)

Panellists: 

Professor Raphael Heffron (Jean Monnet Professor in the Just Transition to a Low-Carbon Economy and Chair of Global Energy Law and Sustainability, Dundee University)

Dr Kirsten Jenkins (Lecturer in Energy, Environment and Society, Edinburgh University)

Dr Andres Luque-Ayala (Associate Professor in Geography, Durham University)
Dr Sarah Knuth (Assistant Professor in Geography, Durham University)
Dr Jessi Lehman (Assistant Professor in Geography, Durham University)

Prof Abram is a social anthropologist with a background in Electrical Engineering. She brings together different disciplinary perspectives on energy and society, ethical and just transitions, and the changing social and political significance of energies, particularly electricity. She is Chair of the Association of Social Anthropologists (UK).

Prof Heffron is Professor for Global Energy Law & Sustainability at the Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy at the University of Dundee.  All his work has a principal focus on achieving a just transition to a low-carbon economy and combines a mix of energy law, policy and economics.

Dr Jenkins is an early career Lecturer in Energy, Environment and Society within the Science, Technology and Innovation Studies (STIS) group of the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Edinburgh.  Kirsten’s background is as a sustainable development and human geography scholar, with research and teaching interests that centre on energy justice; energy policy; science, technology and innovations studies; transitions theory and sustainable energy provision and use.

Dr Luque-Ayala is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at Durham University.  His research agenda revolves around three interrelated topics and their implications for cities, particularly in the Global South.  The development of a critical geography of energy, the socio-technical examination of ‘smart’ forms of urbanization and critical evaluation of urban responses to climate change.

Dr Knuth is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at Durham University. Her research focuses on critical geographies of climate change and clean energy transition, finance/financialisation and the green economy, including work on urban infrastructural and fiscal transformations, transitions justice and dis/reassembly in a green industrial revolution. 

Dr Lehman is a human-environment geographer primarily interested in international environmental politics. Her current research on energy comprises two main themes: 1) The intersections of climate change adaptation/resilience and fossil fuel extraction; 2) New geographies of offshore energy and their relationships to marine politics.

Register here.