This article examines how renewed interest in mineral extraction in Sweden is articulated and enacted by the government through political narratives and governance practices in the context of the EU Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA). Drawing on a narrative analysis of policy documents and public statements, it shows that acceleration operates not merely as an administrative response but as a governing principle that reorders authority, legitimacy, and democratic engagement in mining governance. Four interrelated modes of change are identified—adding, replacing, removing, and limiting—through which urgency narratives legitimise institutional restructuring, centralisation, and the curtailment of deliberative safeguards. While framed as necessary for the green transition, these reforms simplify complex trade-offs inherent in wicked and super wicked problems and risk undermining deliberative capacity, justice, and long-term sustainability. The article contributes to debates on climate urgency and reflexive governance by highlighting the political and normative implications of institutionalised acceleration in environmental and mineral governance.

Participation in a Megagame and a consecutive facilitated debriefing can enable large groups to co-construct awareness and knowledge about the complex relations involved in developing sustainable futures for current societies. “Switching the current” is a megagame where 20 to 100 participants collaboratively experience the challenges involved in shaping future energy consumption patterns and energy production solutions for their region, just and sustainable from a social, economic and environmental perspective. This paper explores how collective discussions can be visualized to better understand how in-game experiences are connected to real-world phenomena. Doing so, a time-snake method has been developed which visually depicts how reflective group discussions move between “game content” and “real world phenomena”, as well as between “attention to details” and “a broad systems perspective”. The comprehensive analysis and comparison of two debriefing sessions shows how participating in a Megagame can develop awareness and understanding of complex relations in shaping sustainable futures of societal energy systems. It also demonstrates how applying time-snake visualizations can help to evaluate the richness of the reflective co-construction that occurs in facilitated debriefings.

From the executive summary: This report forms the first major milestone of Year 1 Phase 2 of the Hard-to-Reach Energy Users Task (HTR Task). It completes the Subtask 2 discovery phase via an in-depth energy justice landscape and stakeholder assessment.

Our main research objectives were to uncover unintended consequences that arose when policies, programmes, and other interventions were designed and delivered without taking energy equity and HTR and hidden energy end user needs into consideration. We described these unintended consequences using empirical research into specific examples, their causes, and potential solutions here.