Welcome to The Energy Blog, the CEE’s online forum for all things energy! Launched in 2020, the Blog is an open and interdisciplinary space featuring short reflection pieces informed by the latest energy research from the Centre and beyond. We explore key energy issues of contemporary relevance: from legacies of energy industries to the future of nuclear power, from the politics of gas infrastructures to the potential of hydrogen. Our contributors include geographers, historians, social anthropologists, ecologists, physicists, and even astronomers. We are always keen to hear from new contributors, so if you have an idea to pitch, please write to us at [email protected].
by Paul Conlan
Patagonia has long been held up as a bastion of sustainable practices among apparel brands. However, their recent sustainability report paints a troubling picture. If Patagonia can’t make sustainability work, what hope is there for the rest of us?
by Christopher Schulz and Lucy Goodman
We have seen renewed pledges of investment in renewable energy, including hydropower, as well as nuclear energy at COP28 and COP29, although progress varies considerably, as per International Energy Agency reports. In the lead-up to COP30, calls to accelerate the energy transition and honour these commitments are intensifying. In this context, Lucy Goodman and Christopher Schulz highlight surprising parallels between large-scale hydropower and nuclear energy infrastructure, sounding a note of caution about their planned expansion in many countries around the world.
Decarbonising the world’s housing stock is one of the great challenges facing global transitions to Net Zero. This is especially true in Scotland, which is home to one of the least energy-efficient housing stock in Europe. But how can this be done in line with the country’s Net Zero deadline of 2045?
by Ava Rawson
Public awareness around the post-life of offshore oil and gas rigs is severely limited. Little is known about the processes involved in decommissioning rigs with even less known about the safety of these sites. This piece seeks to shed light on this post-life, demonstrating how flexible modelling practises are used to provide ‘assurances’ of future safety.
The Amazon basin is arguably the world’s most important forest given its capacity as a carbon sink and its role as a hydrological cycle. However, people living there are increasingly struggling to maintain living standards. Informed by years of ethnographic work, this post discusses the pressures leading indigenous communities of the Amazon to open up their lands to external gold mining and what has led groups like the Shuar to take up mining themselves within this key global ecosystem.
by Ava Rawson
The accepted international legal custom for liability structuring within the context of Oil Rig Decommissioning is the ‘polluter pays principle’, yet determining fiscal responsibility is not always so straightforward. Through examining the descriptors of decommissioning, the types of knowledge deemed suitable for decision making by operators, and ownership trends, we can gain a better understanding of the complexities of why installations may remain unplugged.
by Zak Gainey
With the global focus on reducing carbon emissions, nuclear energy has seen a resurgence in recent years. However, 2024 might be remembered as a landmark year for this controversial energy source; the year which saw big tech companies advance their own private nuclear initiatives.
by Paul Conlan
The aim of this blog post is to reflect philosophically on questions of our individual moral obligations in the face of climate change. In doing so, we will also respond to two objections which claim we have no obligation at all. That is, my goal as a philosopher is to replace the ‘seeming’ obviousness of our obligations with something more philosophically robust.
Throughout the summer of 2024, CEE Postdoctoral Research Fellow Dr Cornelia Helmcke travelled the Scottish Islands, hosting ‘townhalls’ on Orkney, Lewis, South Uist, Skye and Mull. Local community groups, energy experts and residents were invited to collectively brainstorm constraints to the national electricity grid as perceived on the islands and how to overcome these. In this blog post, Cornelia reflects on her experiences and what she has learned from those who live ‘at the end of the line’.
by Léa Weimann
From my first Climate Strike in December 2015, I knew that I wanted to participate in a Conference of the Parties (COP) on Climate Change. I wanted to take the energy, passion, and frustration I felt as a teenager protesting in the streets into the negotiating rooms that decide our future. Eight years later, the reality of that dream is very different from what I had imagined.
