Just Powers is a project that aims to document change as it is happening on the ground: both energy transition and the social transformations that it engenders. Fifty years from now, people will look back with interest at how we made the shift (or how we didn’t) to new energy systems and new ways of living together on this shared planet.
Just Powers could not exist without the support of our many funders and granting agencies, as well as in-kind support from diverse individuals and community groups, not to mention the important partnerships we have with individuals, community groups and organizations.
The research data and information gathered by the Just Powers team over the next several years (2017-2023) is being archived in perpetuity by the University of Alberta Libraries in an online open-access archive. Beyond documenting change, Just Powers and all its researchers and partners are personally and professionally invested in helping to shape the changes that are underway. This moment of dramatic transformation does not allow us the time to objectively assess what is transpiring and what might be the best path forward—it demands that we act boldly with what limited knowledge we have. Therefore, we believe that we must share the information we have widely and freely, as well as recover lost knowledge, and build new knowledges to confront the current crisis and its fallout.
Climate change is underway. Energy transition is happening. We on the Just Powers team are working to support our communities, and those working within our communities, to produce socially equitable change through knowledge sharing and building. We want to think meaningfully about what needs to change and why, for the benefit of all. Whose voices need to be listened to so that we all benefit from living in more equitable and socially-just relation to one another?
For the Just Powers team, energy transition is not separate from the other pressing social issues of our time like decolonization, indigenous land rights, racism, poverty, gender discrimination or violence against women and girls, just to name a few. For us, these are all part and parcel of an extractivist worldview that needs to change in order to live better on this planet.
Energy transition is a material problem around which we can organize and build new, more environmentally and socially just futures. This is the material problem that we are studying and around which we are working together to imagine just futures for all.
We want to acknowledge our funders and our partners and invite anyone interested in collaboratively working with us to get in touch.
