Brett Christophers, professor of geography at Uppsala University in Sweden, will present “Taking Renewables to Market: Prospects for the After-Subsidy Energy Transition” for the annual Douglas C. Ridgley Distinguished Geography Lecture at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, February 10, via Zoom.
This talk is free and open to the public. To receive the meeting code and password, register here.
Christophers will speak on the current changes in renewable energy resource financing and development. With the cost of key technologies, such as solar and wind power, having significantly declined in the past decade, governments are widely reducing or even removing the subsidies and revenue guarantees that have supported the development of renewables to date.
Christophers will discuss both this growing challenge to the energy transition and a principal mechanism to which renewables developers are turning to try to resolve it – the corporate power-purchase agreement (PPA). Often crucial in enabling developers to raise finance, PPAs have been widely hailed as re-energizing a faltering energy transition. Christophers will raise political, economic, and ecological questions with shifting investment priorities.
A geographer interested in various aspects of Western capitalism, Christophers is based at the Institute for Housing and Urban Research at Uppsala University. His recent publications include two books published by Verso, The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain and Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?
Christophers has worked at Uppsala University since 2008. He received his bachelor’s degree from Oxford University in 1993, his master’s degree from University of British Columbia in 1995, and his doctorate from University of Auckland in 2008.
The Douglas Clay Ridgley Lecture is sponsored by the Department of Geography, Geology, and the Environment. For additional information or special accommodations, please contact Dr. Reecia Orzeck at rorzeck@ilstu.edu.
