Sustainable and Equitable Energy Futures (UNIB10025)

This subject introduces students to the role of energy in shaping society in various forms including the built environment, economic processes, households and communities. Students will come to understand what energy is in an everyday sense, how we measure and control it, and what the social and environmental foundations and consequences of its use are. Students will gain a broad understanding of the key technological, environmental, economic, political and social issues and debates that arise in energy planning. Students will discover that the world offers a variety of energy options, that there is no shortage of energy available to us only a shortage of the environmental and social capacities to deal with transforming the energy that different societies have grown used to. With this context, students will critically consider a range of possible energy futures from engineering, regulatory, social, cultural, economic and political perspectives. Students will think critically about the tools we use to develop future energy scenarios and the implications this has for planning infrastructure, cities, housing etc. By the end of the subject students will be able to use basic quantitative, qualitative and mapping techniques to analyse, critically evaluate and convey information about the nature of energy generation and consumption. Students will be able to demonstrate the ability to apply different types of reasoning to evaluate energy planning decisions. Students will also think about energy futures at different spatial scales (global, regional, national, sub-national and community). They will critically analyse and assess the differential impacts energy decision-making has on different parts of society, with an appreciation of why energy has come to be one of the defining socio-political challenges in the context of our times.