A talk by Per Löfberg
Our place
on earth
We are not the problem. We are part of the answer — once we start seeing ourselves that way.
Book the talkWhy this conversation is needed
A civilisation that learned to see itself as a flaw in nature
“The best thing for the planet would be if I didn't exist.”
A twelve-year-old boy, after an environmental studies lesson
We live in a time of energy transition, climate anxiety and existential uncertainty. Many of us carry an unspoken sense that humanity is the problem — that the more we do, the worse it gets for everything else.
That is the wrong starting point. And a dangerous one.
The boy had just learned about acidification, deforestation, climate change and toxins. He had drawn the only conclusion that seemed consistent. That conclusion is a symptom of something deeper.
This talk is about something else.
About the talk
From pellet stoves in Kitwe to the question of what we actually are
In Our Place on Earth, Per Löfberg explores the basic idea that we are not separate from nature — and that this misunderstanding underlies much of what does not work in our relationship with the planet, with each other and with the work we are trying to do.
Through personal stories from Zambia, from the European energy industry and from a life shaped by searching and starting over, the talk asks: what happens when we stop seeing ourselves as the problem and start seeing ourselves as a possible part of the answer?
Not as naive optimism. Not as faith in technology. But as a deeper shift in how we understand our role.
The talk moves between the concrete and the existential — from pellet stoves in Zambia to Cradle to Cradle thinking, from electric roads in Sweden to the question of what it actually means to live on a planet we share with all other life.
What people take with them
Insights that stay past the next quarterly report
- 01
A new understanding of the relationship between people and nature — without blame and without false optimism.
- 02
The realisation that the energy transition is not only a technical or political challenge, but a civilisational shift that begins in how we see ourselves.
- 03
Ways of thinking differently about responsibility, possibility and meaning in the work they already do.
- 04
A sense that what they do actually matters — not despite the complexity, but inside it.
About the speaker
- Actor
- Energy entrepreneur
- SupaMoto, Zambia
- Evolution Road, SEK 128M
- Storyteller
Per Löfberg
Per Löfberg is not an academic describing the world from the outside. He has lived in it.
As co-founder of Emerging Cooking Solutions — the company behind SupaMoto, replacing charcoal with biomass pellet stoves in Zambia and Malawi — he has spent more than a decade working with real energy transition in one of the world's most demanding environments. He understands what happens when technology meets everyday life, economic constraints and cultural patterns.
As project lead for Evolution Road — a SEK 128 million infrastructure project for electrifying heavy transport, funded by the Swedish Transport Administration — he knows how to keep complex collaborations alive and move change through large systems.
As an actor with a career spanning Swedish film productions and international work, he knows how to carry a story and hold a room.
But what makes Per's voice unusual is the combination. He moves with equal credibility through a boardroom in Zurich and a pellet factory in Kitwe. He can talk about carbon credits and the Paris Agreement with the same presence as he tells the story of the monks in Lusaka who could not answer what good Christianity had brought to Africa — and laughed at their own ignorance.
He is not a guru. He is a person who followed an inner compass through chaos, setbacks and detours — and arrived at a few insights he wants to share. That makes the talk something other than information. It makes it a conversation.
Who it is for
Organisations that want to give their people something to carry with them
Our Place on Earth suits organisations, conferences and educational settings working with energy transition, sustainability or leadership — and who want to give their people something that lasts past the next quarterly report.
- Length
- Around 40 minutes plus open conversation
- Language
- Swedish or English
- Format
- Conference, staff day, education
- Fee
- Discussed in conversation
Book the talk
Let's start a conversation
Tell us briefly about the setting — who is listening, when it happens and what you hope the day will leave behind.
Per reads everything himself and usually replies within a few days.