[Conference] 25 March 2024: "Without transition. A new history of energy" by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz

The 25 March 2024We are delighted to welcome Jean-Baptiste Fressoza historian of science, technology and the environment and researcher at the CNRS (Centre de Recherches Historiques de l'EHESS). He will be giving a talk on the theme:

"Without transition. A new history of energy".

"The "energy transition" is based on a certain past. Its strength of conviction lies in its ambiguous nature, straddling the line between history and the future. Just as in the past mankind made a number of transitions - from wood to coal, then from coal to oil - now, faced with climate change, we need to make a third, towards nuclear power and/or renewable energy.
The problem with this comforting future is that it is based on a false history, punctuated by a succession of eras. Energy sources are in symbiosis as much as they are in competition, and these symbiotic relationships explain why, over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, primary energy sources tended to add up rather than substitute each other. So why has the notion of energy transition come to the fore? How did this future without a past become, from the 1970s onwards, the future of our governments, the future of consultancy firms and international organisations - in short, the future of reasonable people?

Jean-Baptiste Fressoz is a historian of science, technology and the environment, and a researcher at the CNRS (Centre de Recherches Historiques de l'EHESS). He is the author of several books published by Seuil: l'Apocalypse joyeuse. Une histoire du risque technologique, 2012, l'Événement anthropocène, 2016, Les révoltes du ciel, 2020 and more recently Sans transition. A new history of energy.

Suggested reading :
JB Fressoz, Sans transition. A new history of energy
David Edgerton, The shock of the Old, London, Profile, 2006.
Vaclav Smil, How the world really works, 2022.
Edouard Morena, Fin du monde et petits fours, Paris, La Découverte, 2022
Romain Felli, La grande adaptation, Paris, Le Seuil, 2016

Date and place :
Avignon University, Campus Hannah Arendt, Amphi AT03
From 6.00 pm to 8.00 pm

Free admission and compulsory registration à com-recherche@univ-avignon.fr until 25 March 12:00 - for people from outside the university (full names).