Thursday, January 9th, 2025
Benjamin K. Sovacool, Professor of Earth and Environment, Boston University
Maurice Carney, Executive Director, Friends of the Congo
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Dr. Benjamin K. Sovacool is Professor of Earth and Environment at Boston University in the United States, where he is the Founding Director of the Institute for Global Sustainability. He is also Professor of Energy Policy at the Bennett Institute for Innovation & Policy Acceleration at the University of Sussex Business School. He was formerly Director of the Sussex Energy Group at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex Business School in the United Kingdom, and Director of the Center for Energy Technologies and University Distinguished Professor of Business & Social Sciences at Aarhus University in Denmark.
Professor Sovacool works as a researcher and consultant on issues pertaining to energy policy, energy justice, energy security, climate change mitigation, and climate change adaptation. More specifically, his research focuses on renewable energy and energy efficiency, the politics of large-scale energy infrastructure, the ethics and morality of energy decisions, designing public policy to improve energy security and access to electricity, and building adaptive capacity to the consequences of climate change.
His research has been endorsed by U.S. President Bill Clinton, the Prime Minister of Norway Gro Harlem Brundtland, and the late Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom, among others. He was a Lead Author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), published in 2022, and he serves on the Board on Environmental Change and Society for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in the United States. With much coverage of his work in the international news media, he is one of the most highly cited global researchers on issues bearing on controversies in energy policy and climate change. His research has been ranked in the world’s top 1% of social scientists according to citations of his publications in 2019, 2020, 2019, 2022, 2023 and 2024.
Maurice Carney is one of the co-founders of Friends of the Congo and currently serves as the organization’s Executive Director. He has pursued a Pan African solidarity mission for the past twenty-five years to build a global constituency in support of the Congolese people as they strive to fulfill Lumumba’s vision of a free and liberated Congo. His educational and professional background focused on Black and African politics, having attended Grambling State University, University of Akron and Howard University and worked with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Push Coalition. He provides consultation to political leaders in the US, Canada, Latin America, Africa, the UN as well as to international NGOs and funders. He delivers lectures and workshops to universities, faith institutions, and businesses. He also does interviews and writes articles on developments related to climate, energy transition, politics, peace, security and conflict in the Congo and Africa for a wide range of publications and media outlets. Maurice is one of the producers of the Basandja film series, which document how Indigenous and local communities address the challenges in Congo’s rainforests, mining communities and conflict zones.
