Power to the People: Sparking Post-Coal Conversations

As coal declines, what happens to the communities built around it? This talk explores how people navigate change, uncertainty, and new futures in the shift to a fossil-free world.

Speaker bio: Hedda Askland is an anthropologist and Associate Professor at the University of Newcastle. She researches how coal communities navigate change, focusing on identity, place, and lived experience in the shift toward more sustainable futures.

Steel underpins modern life, but its production is one of the largest sources of global carbon emissions. While many solutions focus on hydrogen, this talk explores a different path: making iron directly with electricity. Using electrolysis, we can produce iron without coal or hydrogen—offering a promising new direction toward cleaner, more sustainable steel production.

Speaker bio: Simin Moradmand is a Research Academic in Chemical Engineering at the University of Newcastle with 9 years’ experience, working on electrochemical methods for low-emission metal production, including iron electrolysis for sustainable steelmaking.

Microemulsions are ubiquitous to modern day chemistry but few have passed electrons through them. What we do at Allegro energy focuses on using microemulsions as media for energy storage specifically but the ideas also unravel a myriad of processes where electrons can be used with ease and efficiency. These processes range from batteries to sensors and fundamentals unravel intuitions and urgencies alike. My talk sheds light on the benefits of using microemulsions as electrolytes.

As Australia shifts away from coal, many communities shaped by hard, physical work are being asked to adapt to an increasingly knowledge‑ and services‑based economy. This is a huge change – and a disorientating one for many. This talk will explore how, as coal mines and coal‑fired power stations rapidly approach the end of their lives, the jobs and opportunities of the new economy can still feel “out of place” in regions where both identities and ways of life have been so deeply forged by generations of resource extraction and energy production.

Presenter blurb: Myles Egan is a PhD Candidate in Human Geography at the University of Newcastle and a member of the Youth Committee for the Hunter.