Global Centers Track 2: Green Energy Transitions in the Far North (GET North)

Transitioning from fossil fuels to green energy requires a considerable shift in the way energy is generated, transmitted, and consumed, prompting similarly dramatic changes across raw mineral mining operations, labor force recruitment, and infrastructure development, with powerful implications for the environment and Indigenous populations who have traditionally used land for other purposes. The Global Centers Track 2 Design award Green Energy Transitions North (GET-North) connects a multidisciplinary, multinational team of researchers with rightsholders and stakeholders in two regions in the far north–Alaska and northern Sweden–to examine through comparative analysis how best to navigate their respective green energy transitions. While these regions’ governance structures and national contexts differ, both feature chronic population decline, regional economies oriented primarily around resource extraction, land-use conflicts pitting industrial development against traditional Indigenous lifestyles, and infrastructure challenges characteristic of rural regions with cold climates. This project seeks to develop new models of collaborating across academic disciplines, connecting researchers and community members, and training a new cohort of scientists and citizens with the tools required to grapple with the complex societal problems that the green energy transition imposes. GET-North takes a big-picture approach to societal transformation, integrating technological innovation, governance models, and environmental change to identify community-defined priorities and develop appropriate solutions to shared challenges, with justice at the center of all analyses. By consciously co-producing research with community members, the project builds a foundation for a future global center to illuminate ways of balancing the benefits of green energy in terms of decarbonization, jobs creation, and the stimulation of new types of manufacturing with the environmental and social costs. This community-engaged, multi-institutional, multinational project will develop the capacity to launch a Global Center devoted to conducting interdisciplinary, use-inspired research on green energy transitions with the goal of ensuring that they occur sustainably and justly. This project employs a comparative and holistic approach, examining how Alaska and northern Sweden grapple with the sociotechnical transformations required to decarbonize their respective regional and national economies. Sharing climatic and demographic challenges, northern Sweden and Alaska have much to learn from exchanging knowledge and community-led solutions that connect technological, governance, environmental, and social impacts of large-scale transitions. GET-North builds capacity to launch a future global center by developing strong connections with local industry, governments, and community organizations while strengthening cross-disciplinary ties among Swedish and U.S. researchers and training a future generation of researchers with the skills to address complex societal problems. The project team brings together energy and systems engineers, geographers, social scientists, public health specialists, Indigenous studies faculty, and arts curators, integrating an extensive network of community contacts with the expertise and knowledge to develop a comprehensive understanding of the green energy transitions needed to mitigate climate change. This award is funded by the Global Centers program, an innovative program that supports use-inspired research addressing global challenges related to climate change and/or clean energy. Track 2 design awards support U.S.-based researchers to bring together international teams to develop research questions and partnerships, conduct landscape analyses, synthesize data, and/or build multi-stakeholder networks to advance their use-inspired research at larger scale in the future. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.