Peripheral Visions: When global agendas meet Nordic energy peripheries

This research projects examines how visions of renewable energy are produced, contested and materialized in local contexts in northern Sweden, Finland and Greenland, and how the encounter between global agendas and local places, communities and people creates new perspectives from the periphery with the potential to change the view of what global sustainable transition really means.

Against this background, the research is based on the following questions: How, and by whom, are northern regions depicted and realized as energy peripheries and 'right places' for clean energy production and clean futures? What happens when renewable energy transformation agendas are realized in concrete places where they meet local voices and 'peripheral visions', and what frictions arise along the way? What can we learn from the frictions between renewable energy, people and agendas, and how can these lessons create starting points for rethinking global sustainability agendas?

Seven in-depth case studies explore how peripheral areas are imagined as the 'right place' to create clean energy in the future. In case studies 1-3, we examine visions for renewable energy deployment in the North from a central global perspective. In them, we will examine how, by whom and by what means "clean" energy is imagined and realized as a cornerstone of global sustainability and projected onto the North as the "right place." Case studies 4-7 examine how energy transition agendas encounter local realities and voices in northern Sweden, Finland and Greenland, and explore the "peripheral visions" and frictions that arise from these encounters.

The project engages researchers in the history of ideas and technology, environmental history, social anthropology, human ecology, political science, ecology and social science energy research, using methods and theories from the different research fields. Each case study will become a scientific article, in addition to which an anthology in English will be written. LTU History participate in the project through historian Hanna Vikström.

Funder

Swedish Literature Society (SLS) in Finland. 9, 5 MSEK.

Research leader

Erland Mårald, Professor of History of Ideas, Umeå University

Participating researchers

Camilla Sandström, Umeå University
Therese Bjärstig, Umeå University
Tim Horstkotte, Umeå University
Janina Priebe, Umeå University
Ebba Lisberg Jensen, University of Gothenburg
Hanna Lempinen, LUKE, Finland
Hanna Vikström, Luleå University of Technology,
Åsa Össbo, Umeå University

Publications

Sandström, C., (2024) "Green transformation or green colonialism - contrasting perspectives on how to address the climate and nature crisis" Utmark, 1. External link, opens in new window.

Lempinen, H. (2024) "Energy transition in the shadow of a war of aggression". In Eastern Studies 31(1):31-33.

Svensson, J., Neumann, W., Bjärstig, T., & Thellbro, C. (2023) Wind power distribution across subalpine, boreal, and temperate landscapes. Ecology and Society, 28(4).

Priebe, J., Mårald, E., Vikström, H. "Holes of Hope and Uncertainty- Test wells as a site of potential, exploration and the verdict on Greenland's oil development in the 1970s and 1990s." The Polar Journal.

Project website

Views from the periphery. External link, opens in new window.