Contradictions of Energy: Markets, States, and the Struggle over Transition

Energy lies at the heart of today’s overlapping crises. Geopolitical conflicts, accelerating climate change, and deepening cost-of-living pressures are all shaped – and intensified – by the ways energy is produced, distributed, and governed. Far from being a merely technical domain, energy has become a central site of social conflict, political instability, and democratic risk.

At the same time, contemporary societies are under mounting pressure to undergo a far-reaching energy transition. For years, there has been broad agreement on its core objectives: decarbonizing energy production, expanding renewable generation, investing in grids and storage infrastructures, and improving sector coupling. Yet despite this apparent consensus, the transition continues to fall short. It remains too slow, too uneven, and too often reproduces existing social and ecological injustices. This conference starts from the premise that these shortcomings cannot be explained solely by a lack of political will or technological capacity. Rather, they are rooted in the organization of capitalist economies and states, as well as in the planning practices that currently structure energy systems.

Bringing together perspectives from political economy, political science, sociology, history, philosophy, critical theory, and ecological economics, the conference approaches energy planning as a key site of contradiction within contemporary capitalism: between economic growth and decarbonization, market coordination and public control, affordability and accumulation, stability and transformation. By examining the historical trajectories of energy governance, current forms of state planning, and emerging projects of socialization and energy democracy, the conference addresses these central questions: Who has historically planned and steered energy systems, and how has this changed over time? Who is steering them today? What material and institutional barriers obstruct transformative energy planning, and how might they be contested? How must energy systems be reorganized to enable an emancipatory social and ecological transition? And what would it mean to socialize energy?

Programme

Thursday, 12 November 2026

Conference Opening & Keynote, Refugio Berlin 

18:00 – 18:15 Speaker Introduction & Welcome by Conference Organizers

18:15 – 20:00 Keynote: Adam Tooze (Columbia University): Three Shocks: The Climate Crisis & the Actually Existing Energy Transition, Moderation: Solveig Degen & Jacob Blumenfeld

Friday, 13 November 2026 — Grimm-Zentrum, HU Berlin

10:00 Check-In & Arrival with Coffee

10:15 – 10:30 Conference Opening & Welcome from the Organizers

10:30 – 12:30 Panel 1: Critical Theories of Energy 

• Daniela Russ (University of Leipzig) — Contradictions of Electricity 

• Andreas Folkers (Columbia University, NY, Institute for Social Research Frankfurt) – Analytics of (In)finitude. Energy and Emissions Between Economy and Ecology

• Cara Daggett (RIFS Potsdam) — Putting Metrics Last: A Decolonial Feminist Approach to Measuring Energy Justice 

• 10 min break 

• 50 min questions & roundtable 

• Moderator: Jacob Blumenfeld

12:30 – 14:30 Lunch

14:30 – 16:30 Panel 2: State Capacity for Energy Grid Planning  

• Leon Wansleben (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies) — Combinatorial Political Economy: Infrastructure Remaking in the Renewable Electricity Transition

• Ronan Bolton (University of Edinburgh) — Challenges of Planning and Coordinating Investments in British Electricity Networks 

• Jacob Hasselbalch (Copenhagen Business School) — Grid Geopolitics and Transnational Planning: China in the Brazilian Energy Transition

• 10 min break 

• 50 min questions & roundtable 

• Moderator: Solveig Degen

16:30 – 17:00 Coffee Break

17:00 – 19:00 Panel 3: Workers and the Decarbonisation State 

• Richard Bärnthaler (University of Leeds) — Strategic Transformation Research for a Critical Conjuncture

• Melanie Pichler (BOKU Vienna) — Transforming a Fossilized Metabolism: Structural Limitations of the Decarbonisation State

• Simon Schaupp (KU Leuven) — Workers in Germany’s Energy Sector: Contradictions Between Planning and Executing Work and Their Implications for Socialisation 

• 50 min questions & roundtable 

• Moderator: Rabea Berfelde

Saturday, 14 November 2026 — Grimm-Zentrum

9:45 Arrival & Coffee

10:00 – 11:45 Panel 4: Energy Investments, the State & Transformative Politics

• Canay Özden-Schilling (National University Singapore) — Pitfalls of Energy Investments Erring on the Side of System Expansion 

• Rosie Collington (Copenhagen Business School) — Risk Dumping and the Uneven Finance of State Decarbonisation Projects 

• Helen Traill (University of Glasgow) — Community Wealth Building and Local Energy Ownership in Scotland 

• 45 min roundtable 

• Moderator: tba

11:45 – 12:00 Break

12:00 – 13:30 Future Histories Live-Podcast on “Energy Planning in Practice” with Melanie Brusseler (Common Wealth), Adam Tooze (Columbia University), and Max Wilken (Communia), Moderator: Jan Groos

13:30 – 13:40 Conference Closing

Further information (LINK)