Dear all,
Sophia Maalsen (The University of Sydney, Australia) and Sung-Yueh Perng
(National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan) are organising a
workshop entitled Algorithmic carbon governance: Climate, computation,
cities and beyond in April, 2025. We invite you to send in an abstract if
you are working on related topics and interested in writing up your work as
part of a special issue or an edited book. The workshop will be on 10 and
11 April 2025 in Sydney with remote participation possibilities. Please see
below for further details.
Call for paper
Seminar title
Algorithmic Carbon governance: Climate, Computation, Cities and beyond
Seminar rationale
Cities, accounting for over 70% of global emissions, have begun to set
decarbonisation goals and policies, with smart technology positioned as a
key enabler. In Australia, the Federal Government’s 2022 Long-Term
Emissions Reduction Plan firmly focuses on technology, with the “Technology
Investment Roadmap” being central to the plan (DCCEEW 2021). In Sydney, the
Resilient Sydney Platform has been tasked with ‘measuring and reporting on
environmental performance’ and ‘supports more strategic and
evidence-based
planning and decision making’. Among Asian cities, Tokyo, much like the
central government, published a comprehensive plan in 2019 to outline its
aims and strategies for reducing emissions and the adoption of AI and IoTs
to facilitate carbon reduction. Taipei published its white paper on
Taipei’s net zero actions, including using intelligent technologies in
architecture, public transportation and traffic management. As illustrated,
climate actions now rely on innovation powered by artificial intelligence
(AI) and high computing capabilities to know, plan and facilitate carbon
reduction measures, or ‘algorithmic decarbonisation’.
However, amidst government strategies and science and engineering research
that feature ‘computing for net zero’ (The Royal Society, 2020), there is
a
clear need to unpick techno-solutionist approaches that can produce
negative consequences at both local and global scales. As Crawford (2021)
demonstrates, data and digital technologies can be harmful, have unintended
consequences or maintain and amplify structural inequalities. Further, the
process of digitalisation itself is highly extractive and resource
intensive, relying heavily on rare earth minerals, and requiring
significant energy to run associated technologies and cloud computing
infrastructures.
There is also an implicit assumption that technological innovation and
social innovation sit in separate domains and therefore can be planned and
pursued independently. But technology has long been known as sites of
political struggles and contestations. Neglecting the politics of digital
innovation and its entanglement with urban, environmental and political
processes can severely jeopardise transition progresses. Additionally, a
just decarbonisation is crucial, but justice is differently perceived,
articulated and enacted in different urban, environmental, economic and
cultural conditions, leading to pressing questions concerning how
non-western perspectives and experiences can be recognised.
This seminar invites participants to examine the potential impact of
algorithmic decarbonisation on our cities, regions and states. As a site of
both global emission generation and decarbonisation, cities are at the
centre of climate response. But as highlighted above algorithmic
decarbonisation is complex and produces environmental, social, and
political implications. Contributions are therefore invited to consider the
practices, knowledges, imaginaries and infrastructures; critically reflect
upon the mode of governance that enrols algorithms and computational
processes; and explore how algorithmic decarbonisation has led to
reconfigurations of human and nonhuman lives in different places.
The seminar will be an in-person event on 10 and 11 April 2025 in Sydney.
The accommodation cost for one night will be covered by the Henry Halloran
Research Trust, The University of Sydney. A special issue or a book
proposal will be developed based on the contributions of the event. We
particularly encourage contributors from the Global South and emerging
scholars to express their interests. A timeline for submission and special
issue proposal is detailed below.
Timeline:
Abstract deadline (300 words): 17 January 2025
Notification of acceptance: 3 February 2025
Draft (4000 words) deadline: 22 March 2025
Special issue / book proposal: June 2025
If you are interested and would like to discuss your ideas about developing
an abstract, or have other questions, please do not hesitate to contact
Sophia Maalsen (sophia.maalsen@sydney.edu.au) and Sung-Yueh Perng (
syperng@nycu.edu.tw).
We look forward to hearing from you.
Best wishes,
Sophia and Sung-Yueh
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