For decades, environmental scholars have called for retiring fossil fuels and rapidly deploying renewable energy, warning of escalating climate crisis and the devastating costs of fossil capitalism. However, as renewable energy development expands globally, it has become increasingly evident that these “green” alternatives carry their own profound costs and trade-offs. Far from being inherently sustainable or equitable, renewable energy infrastructures are reproducing and, in some cases, intensifying patterns of land dispossession, environmental degradation, and social inequality. A just energy transition therefore demands not merely a shift in energy sources, but sustained critique, organized resistance, and transformative movement-building to challenge how, where, by whom, and for whom energy is developed. This webinar series examines these questions through critical analysis of extraction, infrastructure, power relations, and possibilities for transformative change.

 

The current geopolitical moment makes these questions especially urgent. Amid the ongoing deadly US-Israeli war on Iran and escalating tensions over energy resources, the violent consequences of how energy transitions are organized become undeniable. Military conflicts in energy-rich regions expose how fossil fuel dependencies continue to fuel violence, displacement, and environmental destruction. Beyond the human cost, these crises threaten to derail climate action and renewable energy development. The current moment underscores that energy transitions cannot be separated from questions of war, imperialism, and international solidarity, making critical examination of power, justice, and alternative pathways even more essential.

 

The series examines energy transitions as contested processes shaped by power, capital, and social struggle. Rather than focusing solely on technological solutions, we explore the political economies and ecologies of energy across diverse global sites, from renewable energy installations to sites of mineral extraction, from manufacturing facilities to spaces of waste and disposal, and from zones of resource conflict to spaces of resistance and alternative organising.