Paths to green energy under spotlight
A Scottish environmental politics expert is in Taranaki to document the region’s transition from oil and gas to green energy as part of his PHD thesis.
Max Cohen lives in Vancouver where he works at the University of British Columbia, and is studying energy transition in the Shetland Islands and Taranaki.
He is researching how the two regions, both of which have a long history of energy production, are facing some similar challenges as they move away from fossil fuels and the way they are linked, including through people.
‘‘I became really interested in these different connections, some Scottish people working in oil and gas moved to Australia and New Zealand,’’ he said.
‘‘I realised not only are there these community connections, the history goes back to the colonial times. There was huge emigration in the 20th century.’’
He is in Taranaki to interview people about the region’s energy history and the transition to green energy, including the recently announced offshore wind project off the South Taranaki coast.
He has been gifted the use of a house in punake for a month and wants to meet people who have played an important role in Taranaki’s energy industry in the past and also those involved in the transition to renewables, including wind and hydrogen.
He will spend the summer as a visiting researcher and giving lectures at Massey University in Wellington. He then has another month in New Zealand before returning to Vancouver.
The project aligned with other work under way as part of the UBC’S Centre for Climate Justice, and one of its programmes was collecting community stories of the Just Transition process, he said.
Cohen grew up in Glasgow and studied at the University of St Andrews before completing an MA in anthropology at Oxford. His PHD is on environmental politics.
He has just spent two months in Shetland, which is a 12-hour long, choppy boat ride from the UK mainland.
An average time to complete a PHD is six years, but he is hoping to finish his in five years, and has already been working on it for three years.
To contact Cohen email max.cohen.ubc@gmail.com or phone 021 199 9065.