Making sense of the future of energy: RMIT’s first Regenerative Futures events season

Over six weeks, the RMIT Regenerative Futures Institute event series explored what shifts in our society, built environment and economy are needed to move from extracting energy to regenerating it.

The inaugural season brought together researchers, industry, First Peoples knowledge holders, artists and community to unpack the concept of Energy Futures, interrogating the future of energy from a truly interdisciplinary perspective across close to 20 events.

The season opened with the Energy Explainer, a live attempt to map a genuinely wicked problem: Australia's energy transition to renewables.

Chaired by founder of Buy Nothing New Month, creator of the original R U OK? Day and The New Joneses, Tamara DiMattina, the panel brought together voices from across the energy sector and each of RMIT's higher education colleges:

• Arron Wood AM, CEO of Euringa Energy, Australia's first Indigenous-owned energy retailer

• Sam Humffray of global wind turbine manufacturer Vestas

• Dr Carol Bond, energy policy and justice researcher, College of Business and Law

• Professor Lisa Waller, College of Design and Social Context

• Dr Petros Lappas, STEM College.

RFI Director Professor Chris Speed set the scene for the evening and the season, making it clear why Energy Futures was chosen as the theme.

"RFI will always pick a cross-disciplinary theme that is hot, that is present, and there's nothing hotter than energy," said Professor Speed.

Rather than argue a position, the Explainer set out to orient people.

"This is meant not as a device to give you the biases, but as a map, a way of navigating complicated spaces," Speed said.

DiMattina put the scale of the shift plainly: "The energy transition isn't just a shift in technology. It's a shift in geopolitics. It changes who runs the global economy, what the jobs are, who has the jobs, and how we all live our daily lives."

A centre of centres

The rest of the season's program took on energy from a diverse range of outlooks, moving between the technical and the human across more than a dozen events.

Everflow, part of the Birrarung Riverfest, brought artists and community to the Yarra River's edge for an immersive experience exploring water as energy. In the Dandenong Ranges, RFI Fellows participated in a series of talks as part of the Burrinja Climate Change Biennale #4.

At The Watershed community space in North Melbourne, RFI hosted the launch of Claire Scobie's book Wild Hope, in partnership with Regen Melbourne and its CEO Kaj Löfgren, asking what it takes to stay hopeful in a climate crisis.

Beyond Extraction, hosted at Brunswick's Composite: Moving Image Agency & Media Bank, paired RMIT researchers with Monash University's Professor Belinda Smaill and Wiradjuri artist and filmmaker Joel Sherwood Spring to interrogate the stories we tell about energy and Country.

On campus, work on waste and reuse drew in STREAT and Ecopha Biotech; a Campus Table lunch brought staff and students at Bundoora together; industry and policy sessions united Future Fuels CRC, ERM and the Internet Society; and housing, mobility and community-network events connected RMIT with Renew, Master Builders Victoria and Merri-bek Tech.

RFI also hosted two activations as part of the City North Shared Futures Festival on Saturday 3 October.

Reciprocity and Regeneration: Lessons from the Murnong, explored First Peoples regenerative practices, reimagining trade in regenerative ways, through an exchange of surplus art materials and artworks with First Peoples artists Vicki Couzens (Keerray Wooroong and Gunditjmara), Brooke Wandin (Wurundjeri), Dominic White (Palawa) and friends.

A hydrogen mobility experience with Toyota encouraged participants to discover a new era of mobility with Toyota's hydrogen-powered vehicles, the SORA hydrogen fuel cell electric bus and the second-generation Mirai passenger car.

A beginning, not an end

The season closed by turning outward with the RFI Community Forum.

The Forum, facilitated by designer and UNEP Champion of the Earth Leyla Acaroglu, shifted the focus from events to an ongoing community of practice, asking how Melbourne keeps working together on regenerative action long after the season ends.

"This is the opportunity for people in the broader Melbourne and Victoria region to come together and connect, share skills, knowledge and practices in what regenerative futures and fundamentals are," Acaroglu said.

"Bringing regenerative thinking, skills and practices into the university is a profound skill for the 21st century and beyond."

To stay up to date with the RMIT Regenerative Futures Institute, follow the LinkedIn page and sign up to regular email updates.

Read more about the RMIT Regenerative Futures Institute.