New Geographies of Energy: Introduction to the Special Issue

Energy issues are fueling expanded and contested policy differences as well as political and economic conflicts and a general social–ecological crisis of now major proportions. Current energy dilemmas are being driven by geographically and historically diverse forces, with far-reaching implications amid long-standing problems. Societies worldwide face a firestorm of volatile energy markets, palpable uncertainties in the provisioning of basic goods and services, social justice impacts, economic risk, declining supplies of easy-to-get oil, climate change, and geopolitical security issues. Indeed, energy is far and away the most significant international resource system and political economic nexus, weighing in as the defining concern of a majority of the largest companies, parastatal firms, and national enterprises. Oil, still the world’s principal energy source, is an unparalleled global commodity, even “mythic” in scope and significance (Watts 2001). Also embedded in the current energy crisis is a surge of advances in technical knowledge as well as broader scholarly and scientific understandings of energy. Public and private interests have strengthened, albeit still inadequately (e.g., among government; Smil this issue), in support of multiprong energy efficiencies as elements of a low-carbon transition and conversions to muchneeded renewable sources and hydrogen-based futures. Geography is central to understanding and addressing the current energy dilemmas. The resource systems of energy production, distribution, and consumption are thoroughly entwined as social–environmental interactions occurring across multiple scales. In the existing arrangement of most energy systems, global and national levels are principal circuits. At the same time, many policies and much of the political action on energy issues, as well as related climate and environmental issues, are at the level of subnational units (the equivalent of state-level governments in the United States), cities, and locales. This special issue seeks to contribute to an approach referred to as the “new geographies of energy.” It examines changing energy landscapes by combining the perspective of globalization processes operating at multiple scales—including many national and sub-national—with a focus on environmental change and resource systems. It follows similar approaches that are being advanced with respect to the “new geographies” of related environmental issues such as global climate change (Liverman 1999; O’Brien and Leichenko 2000; Leichenko and O’Brien 2008), the globalization of environmental conservation and the sustainability of agriculture and food (Zimmerer 2006a, 2006b, 2010), and globalization related to urban environmental issues (Seto, Sanchez-Rodriguez, and Fragkias 2010). Analytically, new geographies of energy emerge through core topics of research such as resource systems, technological change, and broad socioeconomic and political economic processes (Bridge and Wood 2005). Geography’s contributions to these core areas, both existing and newly expanding, are advanced in this special Annals issue. The new geographies of energy cascade across a variety of scales and types of landscapes. Accordingly, the articles in this special issue are organized in a series of heuristically designated sections: (1) the essay of Vaclav Smil (one article)1; (2) geographic approaches to energy modeling and assessment (six articles); (3) fossil fuel landscapes (four articles); (4) landscapes of renewable energy (ten articles); and (5) landscapes of energy consumption (three articles). As would be expected, several of these articles bridge multiple sections, rather than belonging solely to a single type of energy landscape. Furthermore, the energy landscapes, as distinguished here, intermingle in dynamic, place-based processes. Landscapes of energy production most commonly co-occur with landscapes of energy consumption.