Beyond Oil conference

Beyond Oil 2025: Changing Climate Futures

October 22 - 23, 2025

Is society is inevitably moving beyond oil?

We are confronted by ecological degradation, social fragmentation, and climate change. Moving beyond oil entails transforming our resource-driven economy, consumer society, and relationship with capital.  This moment of change presents an opportunity to rebuild the economy, society, and the world in more sustainable, convivial and equitable ways. Imagining and enacting alternative climate futures is a key element in moving society beyond oil.  

Since 2015, the Centre for Climate and Energy Transformation’s biennial Beyond Oil conference has broadened and pluralised understanding of societal futures beyond oil, championing engagement with climate and energy futures. Research at this critical juncture of transition as we shoot past 1.5˚C global warming is pivotal towards redefining and identifying scope for the change in trajectory we so urgently need. How can society move beyond oil? What futures can be made feasible by whom? What societal, political, and economic effects are held in the grasp of possible climate futures? For our 10th anniversary, we invite social scientists and humanists to jointly grapple with these foundational ethical, ontological, and epistemic questions of our time. 

Join us in a collective reckoning of the present, informed by the past, and intent on shaping transformative climate and energy futures.

Beyond Oil 2023: Refuelling Transformation

October 17 - 18, 2023

Society is inevitably moving beyond oil. And yet, the ongoing energy crisis demonstrates that transforming to low-carbon societies is bound up in multiple crises, backlashes and setbacks. Fossil fuel displacement remains both urgent and challenging. We have the knowledge and technology needed, and with political and individual will, we can refuel transformation in a just and inclusive manner. The historical moment also asks us to rethink, re-evaluate and reflect on existing transformative efforts. 

Join us in a collective reckoning of the present, informed by the past, facing the future.

Beyond Oil 2021: Prioritising Climate Action

October 20 - 21, 2021

Society is inevitably moving beyond oil. However, ambiguous targets and plans for phasing out fossil fuels are not sufficient for solving the climate emergency. Climate action must be a priority across all areas of society. We must ask ourselves what it means to prioritise climate action - for the individual, our economy, our political decisions, and our societal institutions. How can we overcome simplistic binaries between welfare and convenience on one hand, and responding to the climate emergency on the other? 

How do we mobilise the societal change necessary to make the prioritisation of climate action a reality?

Beyond Oil 2019: Deep and rapid transformations

October 16 - 17, 2019

Society is inevitably moving beyond oil. However, current rates of change are well below what is necessary to limit global warming to two degrees or less. Low and zero-carbon pathways will require systematic changes in economies, polities and societies. This will affect areas of the world and portions of populations unevenly. Furthermore, existing inequalities hinder the capacity for urgent change. Sustainable transformation must thus simultaneously address the geophysical and socioeconomic challenges of the early 21^st century.

How can we accelerate transformation?

Beyond Oil 2017: Mobilizing alternative futures

October 25 - 26, 2017

Society is inevitably moving beyond oil. The direction that this transformation will take is still highly uncertain. Transformations to societies beyond oil involve deliberate choices that lead to different outcomes with regards to power, justice, inequality and human-nature relations.

Beyond Oil 2015: Geographies of climate and energy transformations

October 21 - 22, 2015 

Society is inevitably moving beyond oil. 

Are we moving beyond oil? How are climate and energy transformations experienced in different parts of the world? What measures do we need to take to move our energy systems in a renewable direction?

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