Peripheral Visions: When global agendas meet Nordic energy peripheries
Research project
The project examines how the renewable energy transition is envisioned, implemented and challenged in the northern parts of Sweden and Finland and in Greenland.
Seven in-depth case studies explore how peripheral areas are imagined as the 'right place' to create clean energy in the future. The project involves researchers in the history of ideas, history of technology, environmental history, social anthropology, human ecology, political science, ecology and social science energy research.
The expansion of renewable energy holds the promise of strengthening global and national climate commitments, while creating jobs and development. But it also creates resistance. Through case studies in northern Sweden, Finland and Greenland, this interdisciplinary program explores how visions of renewable energy are imagined, realized, and contested in local contexts. It also investigates how the encounter between global agendas and local places, communities and people create new perspectives from the periphery with the potential to change the perception of what global sustainability transition really means.
The research group behind the project Peripheral visions (Tim Horskotte is not in the photograph).
ImageMathias Foster and Future Challenges in the Nordics