At our workshop “Navigating the Complexities of the Clean Energy Era,” we convened a conversation examining the risks, opportunities, tradeoffs, and tensions shaping the global energy transition. This gathering was part of a broader initiative, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, aimed at fostering more ethical and reflective approaches to research engagement. Central to this effort was the creation of a space where researchers could grapple openly with the complexities not only of the climate crisis itself, but also of the diverse—and sometimes contradictory—responses to it.
We brought together researchers and practitioners focused on major global investors – particularly China and the United States – and those examining how energy transitions are unfolding in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America. By connecting these perspectives, we sought to better understand how local dynamics intersect with global forces, including shifting energy demands, evolving forms of governance, and geopolitics.
Our invitation to participants to explicitly engage with “tensions” was met with strong enthusiasm. Many participants described deeply felt divisions within communities affected by critical mineral extraction. In regions where rare mineral mining is expanding, some community members view these developments as pathways to economic opportunity, employment, and infrastructure investment. Others, however, expressed serious concerns about environmental degradation, public health risks, and the long-term sustainability of such projects. These intra-community disagreements highlight how the benefits and burdens of the clean energy transition are unevenly distributed.
Participants also emphasized tensions between short-term benefits and long-term sustainability and health consequences. While mining projects may deliver immediate economic benefits, they can simultaneously generate enduring ecological damage and social disruption. Relatedly, discussions frequently returned to the friction between individual and collective interests—where certain actors or groups may benefit directly from extraction activities, even as broader community well-being is compromised or not prioritized in these mining extraction projects. Many participants described these tensions as “the elephant in the room”: widely recognized, yet often left unspoken in formal research and policy discussions.
This reluctance to confront uncomfortable realities aligns with what Olsen (2025) has termed “inconvenient findings.” Participants noted that ignoring or downplaying such findings is often tied to the challenge of communicating information that audiences—or institutions—may not want to hear. Across diverse contexts, participants expressed pressure to keep findings “convenient”. The pressure was felt in a variety of ways. In some cases, this pressure stemmed from organizational missions or political agendas that prioritized particular outcomes, leading to the sidelining of evidence that complicated those goals. At times, organizations literally cut off conversations about inconvenient findings. In other instances, researchers described more subtle dynamics of self-censorship, where they preemptively avoided raising difficult issues.
Additional pressures emerged from within research communities themselves. For example, some scholarly and policy spaces tend to emphasize the benefits of clean energy transitions, while others focus on resistance to extractive industries, sometimes portraying communities as uniformly opposed to mining. Yet, as participants made clear, these portrayals often fail to capture the nuanced and heterogeneous realities on the ground. Clean energy transitions can produce both benefits and harms, and communities rarely hold monolithic views. Nevertheless, prevailing expectations within different research traditions can discourage attention to these complexities.
Underlying these dynamics are deeper, often unexamined, differences in normative assumptions. For instance, many Western critical researchers place a strong emphasis on democratic participation and procedural justice as key indicators of positive outcomes. In contrast, some researchers focusing on China or other contexts may prioritize measurable improvements in material well-being, such as economic development or public health. These differing value frameworks can lead to divergent—and sometimes conflicting—assessments of what constitutes “responsible” policy. Yet, there are relatively few spaces where these underlying values are explicitly discussed or critically compared.
At the workshop, we saw evidence of the way in which simplifications associated with “convenient” findings can lead the policy discourse to distort understandings. One illustrative example emerged in discussions of “illegal” or “artisanal” mining. Participants with direct field experience, those closer to the action, emphasized that these categories are often blurred in practice and deeply shaped by political interests. However, those operating more distantly within policy circles tended to accept these classifications at face value. Importantly, when participants engaged in more open and honest exchange about these categories—examining how they are constructed, applied and politicized—and the direct experiences of those involved, the conversation became significantly more productive and grounded.
We also heard about the phenomenon one participant described as “calculated conformity”—strategic alignment with dominant narratives in order to navigate institutional or political constraints. These strategies can inhibit or accelerate change. While such strategies can sometimes facilitate incremental progress, they may also suppress dissenting perspectives and obscure underlying tensions. This can create a veneer of consensus that masks deeper conflicts, potentially leading to unforeseen challenges down the line. In such contexts, meaningful understanding often requires careful attention to what is left unsaid, as much of the complexity resides beneath the surface of official discourse.
Several participants suggested that while formal participation platforms can lead to more substantive justice outcomes, inclusiveness alone does not guarantee justice. Simply creating spaces for participation is insufficient if underlying power asymmetries remain unaddressed. Instead, more substantive approaches—such as co-production in governance and a clearer understanding of the roles and influences of different actors—are necessary. This includes critically examining how diverse perspectives, interests, and diverse forms of knowledge can be meaningfully integrated into decision-making processes around critical mineral development.
At a broader level, the discussions underscored that governance in the clean energy transition operates simultaneously across multiple scales and directions. Energy policy moves simultaneously in a top-down and bottom-up way. Top-down forces—such as geopolitical competition, national policy agendas, and global market demands—interact with bottom-up dynamics, including local resistance, community organizing, and site-specific negotiations. These processes are further complicated by the diversity of actors involved: national governments seeking minerals from other territories, host governments managing competing interests around access to minerals in their territory, multinational and local companies engaged in extraction, and communities living closest to mining operations and their impacts. Understanding these intersecting dynamics requires sustained attention to both “convenient” and “inconvenient” findings alike.
Looking ahead, the workshop raised important questions about the implications of these insights for governance. What might become possible if researchers, policymakers, and practitioners more openly acknowledged and engaged with the “elephant in the room”? How might more honest and nuanced discussions of tension reshape our understanding of justice, responsibility, and sustainability in the clean energy transition? Addressing these questions will be critical for developing more ethically grounded and context-sensitive approaches to the challenges ahead.