In years’ past, we have counted down our most popular post on the CEE website to celebrate the end of the year – you can find last year’s list here. However, in 2024 we decided to do something a little different and take a look at the Top 10 videos over on the CEE YouTube channel.
Videos for us at the Centre for Energy Ethics are a bit of an odd one. For the most part, we do not create specific video content, but instead we tend to use our YouTube channel as a repository for event recordings. Edited versions of our hybrid events are uploaded to the channel with the speaker’s permission so as to allow a wider audience to engage with the ideas and research presented. In this way, the success of videos testifies much more to the long-term and far-reaching popularity of the wonderful events organised through the CEE and our excellent Event Coordinator, Dr Paul Conlan.
Looking back, 2024 was an event-filled year for the Centre for Energy Ethics. Through the calendar year we held 26 events – from small workshops to our Policy Reunion day – which has translated into 21 new videos – more than any other year since the CEE’s launch! However, this list is not just looking at videos released in the calendar year, and as we count down the most popular videos on our channel, there might be a few surprises from years past!
Number 10: Decarbonising Energy Systems with Robert Price
From our Energy Cafe series, this recording breaks into the top 10 despite only having been online for five weeks. In this talk, Dr Price discussed the roles of materials chemistry and academic-industrial collaboration in the development of electrochemical energy conversion devices, the challenges associated with upscaling and the barriers to deployment. He gave specific focus to decarbonisation of the domestic energy sector and the Scotch Whisky industry, which may explain the video’s appeal!
Number 9: Fusion Science & Ethical Challenges with Peiro Martin
As part of an exchange with the University of Padova, this one-off event was organised in November 2024 by CEE Deputy Director Dr Emilka Skrzypek. In this talk Pietro reviewed the current state of play in regards to nuclear fusion technology across the globe, analysing in particular the opportunities, the open issues and the critical paths for seeing this promising technology come to fruition as a real part of the energy mix.
Number 8: Disenchanted Modernities with Tobias Haller
At the beginning of the 2024/2025 academic year, we were lucky enough to play host to visiting scholar Professor Tobias Haller. During his visit, Professor Haller agreed to present the inaugural CEE Plenary Lecture to kick off our event series for the new academic year. In ‘Disenchanted Modernities’, Professor Haller discussed Mega-Infrastructure Projects and the challenges posed when these projects fail to live up to their sustainability and community-focused promises.
Number 7: We Drift Like Worried Fire | Iain Campbell
Before his current residency, CEE Artist-in-Residence Peter Iain Campbell was an active Centre affiliate. This recording dates back to an Energy Cafe delivered in 2023 where Iain discussed his work documenting everyday life in the North Sea oil and gas fields. The presentation featured a wide range of photographs produced during the two years that he worked onboard a Drilling Rig.
Number 6: What to do with Depletion & Energy Dependency
Part 2 of the Ukraine: Energy in the Spotlight series ran throughout the last academic year. In this final instalment of the series we looked at the future of the resources that are depleting, decarbonisation, green solutions to the old energy problems and interdependency through energy chains. We welcomed Professor Margarita Balmaceda and Professo. Vlad Mykhnenko in order to share their insights into the changes that have taken place in the Ukrainian energy landscape in the past two years.
Number 5: Critical Metals & the Energy Transition | Nick Gardiner
The oldest video to appear on this list is an Energy Cafe recorded back in 2022! Dr Nick Gardiner’s discussin of critical metals and their role in facilitating a low carbon energy system has proven a perennial favourite for CEE viewers and 2024 was no exception to this. In video, Dr Gardiner takes a closer look at the geological, environmental, and economic challenges of critical metals, and why mining activity will inevitably increase as we decarbonise society.
Number 4: Artists in Conversation:
Siobhan McLaughlin & Amy Liptrot
The first recipient of funding through our Event Grant Scheme, the Looking North Through Art series was one of the staples of the CEE event schedule across the last two years; it is great to see one of their recordings make this list. Artists in Conversation brought together artists who work on different media – in this case visual artist Siobhan McLaughlin and writer/journalist Amy Liptrot – to discuss their work in relation to the ideas of landscape, sustainability, and climate change in a Scottish context.
Number 3: Kakhovka Dam – The Energy of Water
The second of the Ukraine: Energy in the Spotlight Revisited series to appear in this list, this instalment was dedicated to the story of the Kakhovka dam. The destruction of this key piece of energy infrastructure by the Russian military in the summer of 2023 had severe short- and long-term consequences from both ecological, ethical and energy infrastructure perspectives. Our invited speakers for this session were Dr Anna Kuzemko and Anna Olenenko.
Number 2: ‘No More Fossils’ Book Discussion | Dominic Boyer
Coming in second for 2024, this event held in February 2024 saw Dominic Boyer discuss his book ‘No More Fossils’ which covers the rise of fossil civilization through successive phases of sucro-politics, carbo-politics, and finally petropolitics. He also looks ahead toward the world that the rapid electrification of vehicles, buildings, and power is creating. What can we do to make electroculture more just and sustainable than the petroculture we are leaving behind?
Number 1: Turkey’s Energy Dilemma | Dr Umit Sahin & Dr Eda Acara
The top video on the CEE YouTube channel for 2024 is ‘Turkey’s Energy Dilemma’. This Energy Cafe hosted in mid-October featured researchers from the IPC Climate Change Cluster, Dr Umit Sahin and Dr Eda Acara as they discussed Turkey’s climate policy, revealing a complex mix of low targets and contradictory promises. This talk also introduces the work of the Climate Change Cluster at the Istanbul Policy Center (Sabancı University) and discuss how evidence-based policy initiatives, such as those of the IPC Climate Change Cluster, are working to bridge these gaps.
There we have it, the Top 10 most viewed CEE videos in 2024. A huge thank you to all those who appeared in any of these recordings, attended any of our events in 2024 and to you for reading so far through this. Keep an eye out in our newsletter, LinkedIn, or BlueSky for the latest news about our future events and please do subscribe to our YouTube channel if you want to help our videos reach a wider audience in 2025!
