The Social Life of Energy

Dear reader,Imagine a future in which we’ve moved decisively to sustainable energy sources and not only that – imagine that that transformation was managed and owned to a large extent by citizens, banded together in cooperatives, foundations and not-for-profit companies. How would that transition have happened? To answer (parts of) that question, I talked to geographers Emma Fo

Hello everyone,continuing my report on ‘webinars about what collaboration looks like in social innovation’. Today, I’m sharing insights from a keynote at the Social Innovation in the Energy Transition conference. The presentation was delivered by a scholar who I presume needs no introduction: Patrick Devine-Wright. (If you need an introduction, start here.) You can also liste

Below you’ll find the transcript of the podcast about the “Fit to Serve” social business model research. The conversation is in Dutch, so the transcript is as well, but if you’re really interested in subject matter, you might trying run this URL through translate.google.com or copy paste up to 5,000 characters at a time into https://www.deepl.com/translator. Of course, you

Before starting off the newsletter proper, I’d like share some meta-reflections on the IPCC report:Arthur Petersen (Prof. Science & Technology, UCL) is pleased:Scientists are no longer afraid to tell it like it is: humans are causing the recent warming of the planet. They are more self-confident. But what also has changed is that people are more willing to listen to them. (in Dut

Happy Monday, folks,Some inspiration for a creative week. What does it mean to ‘innovate’? Many look for the decisive mark of the singular genius or the cutting-edge company. Perhaps the best-known recent example is Elon Musk and Tesla. Not too long ago it was Steve Jobs and Apple. However, you might be familiar with Mariana Mazzucato’s retelling of Jobs’ (iPhone) story. In

“As a nimby, you start researching and thinking critically. They are pushing through their principles, without sufficiently taking into account the well-being of citizens and the natural environment.” – Amsterdam activist against turbines (Volkskrant newspaper).“The men are suspected to send threatening letters to wind farm employees, creating a black paper with libellous t

Last week I teased my interview with Muzna and Neil about tackling corruption in the Lebanese electricity sector. They wrote the report about it (together with Ali Ahmad and Marc Ayoub). Last week you got the gist, but now, you can hear - or read - the whole interview! Find out more about what achieving reliable electricity meant for the people involved, about the intricacies of th

Dear people,Recently I explored the idea that there might be moments particularly productive of change. A break in routines, because of a life transition (a new job, new house, new kid) or because of a societal crisis (say, a pandemic or, uhm, apocalyptic wildfires). The result of that exploration was, in a nutshell: yes, certain moments can make change possible, but not as much as

I’m talking with Tineke van der Schoor about what makes change possible in the energy sector. One key factor: networks. Especially networks that can span different scales. Tineke recently defended her PhD thesis Strategies for Energy Reconfigurations: Obduracy, values and scripts, happy occasion for this talk.The podcast is in Dutch, so if you’re curious but Dutch is not going

Dear folks,In the fall of 2019 (which seems disturbingly close; what happened to 2020?), I wrote about the importance of understanding people in context. Energy practices and energy values are developed in our relation to the things and people around us. Today’s podcast returns to this topic with what actually happened in 2020: SARS-CoV-2. Below you’ll find a small bullet-point