Beyond Oil 2025: Changing Climate Futures

Plenary session: Beyond the myth: building a just climate future

Keynote: Naomi Oreskes, Professor of the history of Science, Harvard University

Commentator: Kjetil Rommetveit, Professor, University of Bergen

Moderator: Silje Kristiansen, Associate Professor at the Centre for Climate and Energy Transformation (CET), University of Bergen

Parallel sessions 1

• 1a: Discourse and speculation
• 1b: Energy communities and Territories
• 1c: Materials and Circularity
• 1d: Resistance and Liberation

Parallel sessions 2

• 2a: The voiceless: Envisioning to Enact
• 2b: Key agents and attitudes
• 2c: Mobility and Infrastructure
• 2d: Transition Leadership

Plenary session: Actionable hope in a changing climate future

In a time when the world can feel like it’s unravelling — politically, ecologically, socially — how do we keep going? How do we stay motivated given the current context that surrounds us?

What kind of hope generates action? Actionable hope is a practice. It’s about finding the room for manoeuvre — even in tight spaces — and using it to act.

In this panel, we bring together voices from diverse disciplines and professional backgrounds. Each has found their own way to navigate this complexity and push forward.

Panel discussion:

Kikki Kleiven, Director, Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research

Petter Gulli, Founder, Chief Hope Officer, 12 years

Thea Emilie Maubach-Vindnes, Verdens beste nyheter

Anne Beate Hovind, Future Library Trust

Moderator: Veslemøy Klavenes-Berge, geologist and podcast host, stories for the future

Open Breakfast meeting: The Norwegian Paradox

Lisa Röstlund, author and journalist

Devyn Remme, PhD Candidate, Centre for Climate and Energy Transformation, University of Bergen

Moderator: Julie Forchhammer, Klimakultur

Parallel sessions 3

• 3a Discourse and Speculation 2
• 3b Futures and Uncertainties
• 3c: Negotitations and Justice

Plenary session:Power shifts: Navigating big energy and local solutions.

Keynote: Out of the frying pan and into the fire: Proliferating catastrophes from nuclear alternatives to fossil fuels

Since before the advent of widespread concerns over climate disruption, the corporate-state interests entrenched around the global civil-military nuclear complex have seized desperately on imperatives to phase-out of fossil fuels. Embedded in some of the deepest and most pervasive political-economic structures of the contemporary colonial-modern world, this massively powerful hegemonic formation is facing a growing existential threat posed by the combined obsolescence of both civil and military nuclear infrastructures.

For its part, ‘commercial’ nuclear power long ago became hopelessly uncompetitive, with government (and therefore corporate) commitments remaining only because it provides a way to ‘trickle down’ resources to support the industrial and skills base for military nuclear capabilities. With prohibitive consequences of even limited use involving not only unprecedented death and human misery, but also worldwide ecological devastation (including nuclear climate change) nuclear military infrastructures also face obsolescence as means to settle international conflicts of interest. With renewable alternatives to fossil fuels manifestly more preferable under any reasonable political view, this talk will explore how worldwide nuclear interests (even more than those around fossil fuels), are warping energy debates, security strategies and democracies themselves.

Professor Andy Stirling, University of Sussex

Early Career Researcher keynote: Making just energy futures from the ground up: Insights from the Orkney Islands

In the UK and in Scotland, energy transition plans are developing at multiple scales, in great part guided by the geographical distribution of renewable energy hotspots. The Orkney Islands, an archipelago off the north coast of Scotland, is one of said locations.

Futures, however, happen in place. A deep dive into collectively developed visions of (un)just energy futures in Orkney sets the scene for the remainder of this talk. Unjust futures are starkly extractive and are rooted in the status quo. Just energy futures, on the other hand, are much less absolute in material terms, while underpinned by shared values of redistribution, solidarity, and collective responsibility.

These visions set out rich empirical pathways to inform Orkney’s energy futures. They alsouncover difficult questions, conflicting needs and trade-offs pertaining to energy transition pathways more broadly. This talk explores themes of power, agency, purpose and multi-scalar interdependencies across species, space and time, in relation to their socio-economic, infrastructural and ontological entanglements. Together, they invite reflection into the tensions and opportunities at hand in the making – and changing – of energy and climate futures.

Lara Santos Ayllon, PhD Candidate, University of Edinburgh

Moderator: Shayan Shokrgozar, Centre for Climate and Energy Transformation

Parallel sessions 4

• 4a: Incumbency and Governance
• 4b: Key Agents and Attitudes 2
• 4c: Regional Transitions

Closing panel and discussion: 10 years of Beyond Oil

Tarje Wanvik, Director, Agency for Planning and Building Services

Håvard Legreid, Conference artist. 

Moderator: Håvard Haarstad, Director, Centre for Climate and Energy Transformation, University of Bergen