Post-AAG Debrief & Looking Ahead
Tiffany Grobelski
Dear EESG Members,
We would like to thank everyone for their participation in the AAG Annual Meeting conference a couple weeks ago and more broadly for your ongoing engagement with our group. In this email, we share highlights from EESG-organized sessions at the conference and flag opportunities for future engagement.
TL;DR - THANK YOU for another amazing AAG and see UPCOMING STUFF below to stay involved or get more involved :)
AAG HIGHLIGHTS
FIRST: A heartfelt shoutout to graduate students - thank you for your involvement in our group, your commitment, your enthusiasm, and all your contributions to our subfield and our community.
At the Futures and Directions panel, an impressive and inspiring crew of early-career scholars discussed future directions for energy geographies, affirming the strengths of interdisciplinarity and the relevance and timeliness of our subfield, while also cautioning us to not become prisoners of the same frameworks we try to critique. Panelists also provoked us to craft a more public energy geography, so our scholarship can be more impactful.
At the California Energy Justice panel, we heard from Poder SF, Reclaim Our Power, Green New Deal CA, Jobs with Justice San Francisco, and Local Clean Energy Alliance about current coalitional and intersecting struggles in the state to support workers, remediate and electrify homes, address the affordability crisis, and wrest power from Investor-Owned Utilities by not only transitioning to new ownership models but also centering a clear vision for justice. We learned about how we can address these crises together in solidarity with various social justice movement struggles without flattening out important nuances within the movement. Special thanks to Dustin Mulvaney for moderating this EJ panel and for shepherding folks through the conference center maze!
help with GIS/mapping
help with research that would support political and policy fights, such as those of public power movements
Reclaim Our Power is interested in developing partnerships with geography researchers who are interested in the twin questions of how to transition the ownership and governance of an investor-owned utility to a not-for-profit alternative (either public or cooperative owned by its customers) and how to design a twenty-first century utility that centers justice in all aspects of its decision-making and operations. Please reach out to Travis Gibrael at tra...@reclaimourpower.org
Poder is "working to scale our equitable building electrification work - which we call whole home - creating healthy resilient homes. We have a hope to set up a system where our organizers can map homes and resources." Reach out to Chris Selig at: cselig@podersf.org
Congratulations to our outgoing EESG Treasurer, Nikki Luke, on her book, Electric Life: Utility Regulation and the Fight for Energy Democracy (MIT Press), which dropped during the conference. The "author meets comrade" session about the book was epic.
EESG co-sponsored a plenary panel session with the Legal Geography Specialty Group, Environmental and climate law and policy in 2026: Proactive responses to the current moment. This critically generative and remarkably timely panel gathered brilliant legal experts to discuss our current political and climate crisis, pairing brilliant scholarship with sharp insights that outlined equitable paths forward in these troubling times.
At our Teaching Energy Geographies workshop, a small but mighty group of us discussed challenges we face when teaching about climate and energy topics and also shared useful teaching resources, in-class activities, and assignments we've crafted. Many of us are focused on skillbuilding, data literacy, and how to get students to "learn by doing" whether on campus or in wider communities.
At our annual EESG business meeting,
We discussed the initiatives we have undertaken throughout the year as well as the membership and financial status of our group. We reviewed our updated bylaws which now include a Values Statement that commits us long-term to always consider climate impacts and DEI institutionally and operationally. We also discussed the results of the AI survey last Fall.
We held elections for open positions in our group. Congratulations to these incoming leaders: Johanna Engström (Co-Chair, University of Florida); Salma Elmallah (Treasurer, Arizona State University); Kristin Schoenecker (Grad Rep, Pennsylvania State University); Jong-Ku Park (Grad Rep, Texas State University); Emmanuel Kofi Ackom (Board of Advisors, University of North Alabama).
We also celebrated award winners, Congratulations!!!
Dissertation Data & Fieldwork Award: Sebastián Solarte-Caicedo; Best Student Paper Award: Deniz Öztürk (Clark University); Advancing Diversity & Inclusion Award: Lyric Patterson (SEAS Detroit Sustainability Clinic); Powershift Award: Sarah Kelly (Dartmouth College); Energy Luminary Award: Tom Ptak (Texas State University).
We had stunning views of San Francisco during our Power Hour coffee reception. Here's one photo from the 45th floor of the Hilton Hotel.
Jennifer Baka delivered the EESG plenary keynote "Political-Industrial Ecology for Just Energy Futures." The monumental talk showcased Dr. Baka's scholarly trajectory and the policy-relevance and impactfulness of her research agenda. She walked us through the ways she has developed and applied Political-Industrial Ecology methodology to study energy systems and seek justice. An audio recording of the talk is available in the AAG Annual Meeting Portal until Friday, June 19th, 2026–highly recommended! For those who would like a copy of Dr. Baka's slides as you follow along the recording, feel free to reach out to us, and we can send you a copy. Thank you to CAPE for Co-Sponsoring this plenary.
For those of you who attended AAG Annual Meeting 2026 virtually, we apologize for technological issues you may have encountered, many of which were out of our control. While we have committed as a group to always have a virtual option for all of our events, in accordance with our commitments to climate action and equity/inclusion, virtual access and inclusion at this conference was disappointingly limited. We apologize and will strive to improve in the future.
UPCOMING STUFF
- EESG Listening Session: Friday, April 10th, 12-1pm Eastern Time [Zoom link]. In keeping with EESG's commitment to community-building, bi-directional communication, transparency and inclusivity, we are hosting another listening session (as we do periodically throughout the year). This is an awesome opportunity to convivially connect, coordinate, conspire and commiserate with comrades! Stop by for as long as you can or want, to talk about whatever you want!
New Leadership Transition: Outgoing leaders will end their tenures on May 31st, 2026 and our elected new leaders will begin their tenure on June 1st, 2026. We'll have a "leadership transition meeting" in May. Goodbye and hello!
MARK YOUR CALENDAR: The Energy Geographies Conference will be held on September 26th, 2026. As every year, this conference will be virtual. Soon we will circulate a call for abstracts. Reach out if you want to assist with organizing. Hope to see you there!
If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions related to EESG, do not hesitate to reach out. We'd love to hear from you.