Our Sponsored Sessions for RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2026!
- engrgrgs
- Feb 1
- 12 min read
Updated: 7 days ago
We are delighted to announce that the Energy Geographies Research Group are sponsoring the following sessions for the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference, London, 1st September - 4th September 2026.
On mission?: Understanding the geographies of clean energy growth and development
Convenors: Stuart Dawley, Danny Mackinnon, Peter Sunley, and Sanne Velthuis.
Session format: In-person - double session.
Session type: Papers session.
Apply: Send short abstract (250 words), name, email address, author affiliation to Stuart Dawley (stuart.dawley@ncl.ac.uk) by 20/02/26.
Abstract: Using the bold ambitions of the UK Government's Clean Energy Superpower mission-led approach as a point of departure, this session invites papers that reflect on what progress we have made, and what challenges still exist, in understanding the geographies of clean energy growth and their contributions to regional development.
Themes and issues could include, but are not limited to, international perspectives and policy insights related to:
· What are the emerging geographies of clean power development (e.g. jobs, investment, innovation, industrial activity)? How effective is our data and evidence base in capturing and understanding these spatial trends?
· What forms of local and regional development are emerging around clean power (e.g. scale and scope of investment, jobs, infrastructure etc.)? How are these being manifested in local and regional visions and futures?
· To what extent does the growth of clean power disrupt or reinforce existing forms of uneven development?
· How effective are existing and emerging forms of governance in delivering the development of clean power across, and within, regions and localities?
· How can we understand the different roles of large-scale flagship energy projects relative to smaller-scale distributed models of energy development in achieving local and regional transitions and development?
· Clean energy related clusters are frequently referenced in policy materials, but to what extent are clusters dynamics occurring and do energy related clusters require new conceptualisations
· What roles exist for more strategic and integrated regional and spatial energy planning, focusing more on the geographical nature of power generation, transmission and consumption?
· What sort of tensions exist in delivering the transition to clean power across, and within, regions? What does this mean for policy?
· In the UK, what are the opportunities and challenges in realising the Clean Power Mission and are these geographically uneven?
· Within an international comparative context, what lessons can we learn from the evolving geographies of clean power and regional development?
· How do localities and regions deal with increased policy uncertainty, or even potential withdrawal, from clean energy growth paths?
Energy Transition and Social Justice: Geographies in the Climate Emergency
Convenor: Mengyao Han and Michael Dunford.
Session format: Hybrid.
Session type: Papers session.
Apply: We are planning an hybrid session of 15-minute presentations. Please submit your abstracts (250 words) no later than Sunday 1 Marth 2026 via email to hanmy@igsnrr.ac.cn, including your name and affiliation. Let us know if you have accessibility requirements as well.
Abstract: Amid the global drive toward low-carbon energy transition under the climate emergency, the spatial unevenness of transition processes and their intrinsic entanglement with energy transition justice have emerged as critical concerns. As the inescapable impacts of climate change and energy challenges continue to intensify, it is imperative to infuse the disciplinary positioning of energy geography with new connotations centered on justice and spatiality. Existing studies often treat energy transition and climate justice as disjointed domains, neglecting their inherent geographical interconnections, including but not limited to how spatial disparities in energy infrastructure deployment shape the distribution of transition costs and benefits, and how local geographical contexts mediate the implementation and outcomes of just transition policies under the climate emergency contexts. This session attempts to address this gap by adopting a geographical lens to unpack the spatial dynamics underpinning energy transition justice, offering a nuanced understanding of uneven transition pathways and their justice implications. Such an inquiry is vital for formulating context-specific low-carbon policies and advancing equitable climate governance in an era of climate emergency.
Suggested areas may include (but are not limited to):
- How do spatial disparities in the deployment of renewable energy infrastructures geographically distribute the costs and benefits of the low-carbon transition particularly under climate emergency imperatives?
- How does the framing of a climate emergency reshape the spatial and temporal dynamics of energy transitions, and how might it exacerbate or alleviate existing spatial inequalities in transition pathways?
- What are the key geographical dimensions that entangle energy transition processes with climate justice concerns, and how can they be theoretically integrated within the discipline of energy geography?
- How can a spatially explicit understanding of uneven transition pathways inform the design of context-specific energy policies that simultaneously address decarbonization goals and climate emergency?
Teaching Energy Geographies
Convenors: Gareth Powells, Stuart Dawley, and Danny MacKinnon.
Session format: In-person.
Session type: Interactive short paper presentations.
Apply: Please Send title, abstract and author affiliations to Gareth Powells by 20/02/26. (Gareth.Powells@newcastle.ac.uk).
Abstract: This will be an interactive short papers session in which we will share current and emerging practice in energy geography teaching, at multiple scales and levels. the short papers will be followed by an interactive discussion involving all the presenters and the audience to explore common themes, challenges and opportunities to collaborate. We look forward to hearing from those developing and delivering energy geography education in field trips, tutorials, modules, and to discussing curriculum design at module and programme level, from across all stages of higher education, from Stage One to PhD level learning.
Short 5-minute presentations are invited which may address, but are not limited to, questions such as:
How do we locate energy geography in broader geographical curricula, both tactically and intellectually?
How do we connect teaching and learning in energy geography with thatin other disciplines, departments, schools and faculties?
How can we transform students from passive consumers of information into engaged and critical producers of knowledge about energy?
How can we help students confront the 'embeddedness' of fossil fuels in everyday life?
How do we address the empirical complexity of energy systems without overwhelming students?
How can we help students critically analyse energy systems at multiple scales?
Tackling Energy Inequalities through Home Energy Advice and Retrofit
Convenors: Katherine Sugar, Hannah Charles, Vicky Kasprowicz, and Stefan Bouzarovski.
Session format: In-person.
Session type: Papers session.
Apply: Please submit a title and abstract (max. 250 words) to Katherine.sugar@manchester.ac.uk by 20/02/2026.
Abstract: The provision of energy advice and home improvements via retrofit are widely recognised as critical interventions for reducing energy demand, improving affordability, and supporting decarbonisation (Bouzarovski et al. 2025; Sugar et al. 2025). Yet their implementation and accessibility remain uneven, raising pressing questions surrounding social justice aspects such as who benefits from energy advice and retrofit schemes and who is left behind (e.g. Charles et al., 2025). We invite UK and international contributions that critically examine the role of energy advice provision and home retrofit practices, specifically for tackling energy inequalities.
Suggested areas may include (but are not limited to):
- Innovative and emerging approaches to delivering household energy advice and retrofit for reducing energy inequalities
- Challenges and opportunities to equitable access for advice and retrofit, including best practice examples and case studies
- Community-led initiatives and grassroots responses in advice and retrofit delivery
- Policy and governance frameworks for progressing energy equity dimensions
- The role of governing actors and cross-sectoral/collaborative partnerships in energy advice and retrofit
Place-Based Approaches to Energy Retrofit: Reimagining Neighbourhoods in Just Transitions to Net Zero
Convenors: Adam Peacock, Jess Britton, Zoe Robinson, Catherine Butler.
Session format: In-person - double session.
Session type: World cafe.
Apply: Please submit a title and abstract to Adam Peacock (Adam.Peacock@ed.ac.uk) by 20/02/2026.
Abstract: Place-based retrofit represents a departure from piecemeal interventions, embedding energy improvements within broader processes of neighbourhood regeneration and transformation. As such delivery may combine energy measures with wider improvements to green space, transport and public realm and/or incorporate innovative finance mechanisms or community co-design. However, as new imaginaries of energy efficient neighbourhoods and places emerge, important questions of power, governance, justice and efficacy also arise (Robinson et al, 2024), including: Who envisions, governs, funds and implements these 'future neighbourhoods'? How do residents from diverse socio-economic, cultural and demographic backgrounds experience, respond to, and engage with such transformations? How democratic and inclusive are such processes? How do place-based approaches mobilise socio-spatial relations to accelerate delivery?
This session invites papers that critically examine the theoretical foundations, practical implementation and social implications of place-based retrofit approaches, drawing on scholarship in place-making, energy transitions, governance, environmental justice and beyond. The sessions will employ a World Cafe approach over two sessions, each comprised of four papers and rotating discussion. We are open to a diverse range of abstracts that engage with the spatial and justice aspects of building decarbonisation and welcome submissions from all career-stages and non-academic organisations.
Energy justice and the longue durée of coloniality within energy systems
Convenors: Anna Cain, Helena Hastie, Ryan Stock, and Idalina Baptista.
Session format: Hybrid - double session.
Session type: Papers session.
Apply: Please send a short abstract (up to 300 words) to Anna Cain (anna.cain@unsw.edu.au) on behalf of the session organisers by Friday February 20th, 2026 that articulates your paper’s generative contributions to or novel departures from the session's core themes.
Additional application information: In these sessions, we imagine having a generative mix of empirical and conceptual studies, and welcome work at any stage of finalization (e.g. prototypical or published), inclusive of creative works. We invite scholars and practitioners from all from all disciplines, career stages, institutional affiliations and geographies. We welcome collaborative presentations (e.g. co-presentation with community co-researchers or similar) in the session. We anticipate this session will be held in hybrid format to minimise the financial and environmental burdens of participating in this international scholarly forum, in line with the themes of this session and the conference. We will support applications for research group guest (complimentary) registration for eligible (co)authors without institutional funding support.
The hope is that enough empirically defensible and theoretically robust papers are featured in these sessions, such that we can curate a collective scholarly output or something else entirely.
If you are interested in presenting your research in these sessions. We will notify you of your acceptance into these sessions by Monday March 2nd, 2026.
Abstract: Achieving energy justice is often assumed possible through technological substitution attained by fast speed at vast scales. Undoubtedly, technologies are important. However, without critically engagement, lower-carbon energy systems can also entrench or exacerbate existing injustices. These concerns are sharply exposed in studies at the intersection between energy change and historical and contemporary experiences of colonisation. Powering colonial-capitalism has long been afforded through extractivism and exploitation. In post-colonial and carbon-conscious contexts, for example, lower-carbon energy has been used as a medium for dispossession and marginalisation (Rignall 2016; Stock 2023) while settler-colonial focused studies illustrate energy justice is often contingent on alignment with dominant social and economic structures (Chandrashekeran 2021; Cain 2024; Hoicka et al. 2021). Neocolonial power is also projected through contemporary systems of international development (Cast?n Broto et al. 2018; Munro et al. 2017) and global capitalism (Dunlap and Arce 2022), often predicated on universalist understandings of the world centred in Euro-American ways of being and knowing (Kumar 2022). Energy systems are also used to further authoritarian agendas predicated on patriarchal and ethnoreligious dominance. Such epistemological stances seemingly infiltrate even "non-colonial" contexts, for example, in sustaining energy ontologies that are presented as the norm but inhibit justice (Cain 2025; Damgaard et al. 2022). Energy justice, therefore, must reckon with the longue dur?e of coloniality within energy systems.
In this session, we invite papers from all disciplines that bring a (de/post/anti)colonial lens to energy justice studies to collectively and critically reflect on the colonial ways of knowing, producing and living with energy. Papers might examine, but are not limited to, the following themes and topics:
Land and place, particularly concerning local and Indigenous peoples and their relationship with land;
Policy, governance and decision-making which enacts or inhibits justice;
Ontologies and/or epistemologies of energy and energy justice;
Alternative, justice-centred energy futures;
Innovative or praxis-oriented methods to study energy in ways that empower marginalized groups
The overlooked spatial politics of the energy transition
Convenors: Afra Foli & Martijn van den Hurk
Session format: In-person
Session type: Papers session. Apply: We are planning an in-person session of 15-minute presentations. Please submit your abstracts (250 words) no later than Friday 20 February 2026 via email to a.a.m.foli@uu.nl, including your name and affiliation. Let us know if you have accessibility requirements.
Abstract: In the grand task of overhauling energy infrastructures to shift towards fossil fuel-free sources and reduce energy consumption, proponents such as municipalities and other public actors have generally foregrounded technology, policy, and cooperation (Devenish and Lockwood, 2024). This session invites contributions on dynamics in the energy transition that complement dominant dialogues.
The session aims to (1) provide multi-scalar readings of the transition, (2) contribute to dialogues on the multiplicity of the transition process in various contexts, and (3) collect and share empirical contributions outlining how energy transitions are being materialized.
We welcome contributions that bring insights from diverse geographical contexts, alongside conceptual discussions. The sub-topics include, but are not limited to:
- the role of everyday maintenance and repair
- geographies of waste and redundancy
- social reproduction and the energy transition at the micro-scale (gender, households, unpaid labour, and more)
- the role of the arts, creative expression, and storytelling
- alternative and plural visions of the transition (from methodologies to geographical contexts)
Contested depths: Subsurface geographies of the energy transition
Convenors: David Barns, Laura Smith, and Jamie Van Alstine
Session format: In-person.
Session type: Papers session.
Apply: Please send title, abstract, and author affiliations to David Barns (d.g.barns@leeds.ac.uk) by 20/02/26.
Abstract: This session examines how subsurface allocation, regulation and contestation intersect with spatial inequalities across multiple dimensions: distributional (who benefits and who bears costs), procedural (who participates in governance), epistemic (whose knowledge counts) and scalar (coordination across regulatory jurisdictions). We're particularly interested in cases where governance fragmentation between surface and subsurface systems creates barriers to just energy transitions.
We invite papers exploring, but not limited to:
Regulatory justice and subsurface access: how governance frameworks distribute benefits and burdens across space, scale and depth, and the ways regulatory structures can privilege certain actors whilst marginalising others.
Spatial inequalities in subsurface resource allocation: conflicts over competing uses (energy, storage, minerals, water) and how decisions about subsurface priorities create uneven development outcomes, including tensions between surface development and long-term underground use.
Subsurface development and surface environments: how subsurface resource use intersects with landscape protection, heritage conservation, and nature designation, including conflicts between decarbonisation goals and the preservation of valued places, cultural landscapes, and biodiversity.
Procedural inequalities in subsurface decision-making: patterns of community inclusion and exclusion in subsurface development decisions, the challenges of engagement around invisible or uncertain underground risks, and whose voices are heard in shaping subsurface futures.
Property, power and subsurface justice: how ownership frameworks shape unequal access to subsurface resources, questions of who benefits from subsurface stewardship versus who bears long-term risks and responsibilities and contested claims to underground spaces.
Comparative perspectives on subsurface governance inequalities: international differences in how planning systems, regulatory capacity, and institutional arrangements produce varied patterns of subsurface (in)justice across different national and regional contexts.
Epistemic inequalities in subsurface governance: how technical expertise requirements, data access, and modelling practices create uneven capacities to participate in subsurface decisions, and how these knowledge asymmetries reproduce spatial inequalities between well-resourced and marginalised actors, places, and communities.
Subsurface justice and uneven energy transitions: how subsurface governance intersects with spatially differentiated climate transition pathways, including carbon lock-in, place-based inequalities in decarbonisation opportunities, and the potential for subsurface resources to either reproduce or challenge existing patterns of uneven development.
We welcome theoretical, empirical, and practitioner perspectives that explore how subsurface geographies connect to questions of spatial inequality, environmental justice, and pathways toward more just and equitable energy and resource transitions, with particular attention to how planning, policy and governance arrangements shape what subsurface energy transition futures become possible in practice.
The unlikely geography of climate leadership and innovation
Convenors: Oleg Golubchikov, Wolfgang Haupt, and Sina Shahab
Session format: In-person - double session.
Session type: Paper session. Presentation duration 15 minutes.
Apply: Please send title, abstract (250 words max), and author affiliations to Oleg Golubchikov (golubchikovo@cardiff.ac.uk).
Abstract: Understanding this unlikely geography of climate leadership remains limited, yet it is important for ensuring a genuinely just transition. First, recognising leadership and innovation beyond economically successful regions is essential for epistemic justice: it challenges who is seen as a legitimate source of climate innovation, governance and experimentation. Second, the experiences of less wealthy and peripheral places are more transferable to the other regions facing similar constraints than the more celebrated cases. Two further key issues, however, are economic impact and political durability. Can such peripheral climate leadership translate into wider economic and social opportunities for these places? And can it be sustained over time amid persistent institutional and financial limitations, alongside intensifying backlash and contestation around climate policy?
This session invites contributions that investigate this unlikely geography of climate leadership; exploring how poorer and peripheral places are not only sites of risk and vulnerability, but also potential innovators, leader, and agenda-setters in the net-zero transition.
Submissions may address the following or related questions:
What are the factors and enablers that shape proactive or innovative net-zero actions in economically disadvantaged (left-behind) areas? How do local states, businesses and civil society interact to produce climate leadership in such contexts?
Can strong climate leadership translate into economic regeneration and “turnaround” dynamics, or does it intensify pre-existing divisions and vulnerabilities?
How can the innovative activities of left-behind places contribute to the reduction of territorial inequalities and lead to (more) just transitions?
Does a strong commitment to net-zero and climate action at the government level generate a wider local political consensus? How resilient is this climate leadership in the face of backlash, polarisation, and shifting policy environments?
Application guidance:
All prospective delegates are welcome to submit a paper proposal to any of the sessions advertised.
Please note that each call for contributions has its own deadline (generally much earlier than the main deadline of Friday 6 March 2026), and own process for submitting a paper proposal. Please read the call carefully and direct any questions to the session organisers.
Delegates will be limited to ONE paper presentation and ONE panel/workshop contribution, OR TWO panel/workshop contributions. The role of discussant is included as a panel/workshop contribution.