The evolving borderland of energy geographies

Abstract

Energy geographers have characterized energy as a borderland topic because of its ability to straddle and interconnect different geographic concepts and debates. In this review, we evaluate how the borderland of energy geographies has been emerging in recent years by analyzing scholarship on energy published in top geography journals and a leading energy studies journal, Energy Research & Social Science. In part 1 of our review, we evaluate how the borderland of energy geographies is evolving by mapping the geographic range of empirical studies, the processes and types of energy systems being researched and the key geographic concepts/theories engaged across the four main sub‐fields of geography. We find that energy geographies scholarship has primarily centered on the Global North, remains focused on the extractive and production phase of energy development and is evolving across and within three of the four sub‐fields of geography. Energy transitions, governance, justice, space, and landscape are key topics and concepts examined. Notable underrepresentations include a relative lack of energy geographies scholarship within physical geography, as well as limited studies that engage geographic concepts to study the transportation sector, unconventional energy development and the food‐energy‐water nexus. In part 2, we identify three broad research themes to expand the frontier of energy geographies: (a) geographies of energy knowledge production, particularly indigenous knowledge; (b) materializing energy, especially through engaging political‐industrial ecology; and (c) advancing geographic thought by critically assessing how studying energy advances/challenges/transforms core geographic concepts and debates. Collectively, our review demonstrates that energy geographies have established firm footing within and across geography. Deepening engagement with emerging trends elsewhere in geography and the social sciences will not only help to better conceptualize what a geographic perspective on energy means but will also help to make clearer sense of the rapid economic, social, environmental, and political transformations currently underway within the global energy system.

A Postcolonial Critique of Community Energy: Searching for Community as Solidarity in India and Scotland

“…While neither was initially interested in asking questions of the (micro) politics of solidarity-one focused on community-based environmentalism in Scotland, the other on the politics of energy access in rural India-the politics of community discourse emerged as a generative theme in both projects. The first project studied the emergence of city-wide Transition initiatives over a three-year period in Scotland (Aiken 2014). In our reflections, we were struck by a stark disbalance between the significance of a renewable energy scheme and the way the group put this project to use in order to solidify the group relations and perpetuate togetherness.…”

“…After an initial flurry of both empirical examples and theoretical work, CRE has matured and settled into a research pattern. CRE cases are predominantly drawn from North Western Europe (Bomberg and McEwen 2012; Eadson and Foden 2019; Fuller 2017; Seyfang et al 2014), echoing energy geography as a whole being primarily centred on the global North (Baka and Vaishnava 2020). It is telling that Bauwens et al’s (2016) study of the development of community energy in “Europe” is based on four countries: Denmark, Germany, Belgium, and the UK.…”

Democratizing Energy, Energizing Democracy: Central Dimensions Surfacing in the Debate

“…• Space: In a carbon-constrained world with scarcities (Bridge, 2015) where limits are both real and relational (Kallis, 2019), research on energy geographies serves as an anchor in exploring new energy frontiers for a radically different, sustainable societal re-organization (Baka and Vaishnava, 2020). A switch from the dense, low entropic and geospatially specific fossil fuel-led energy system to a renewable dominant, high entropic, mixed energy provision system, creates new spaces and dynamics in territorial terms (Schiedel and Sorman, 2012) as much as it fuels contestation (Huber and McCarthy, 2017).…”

Policy insights for regional renewable energy deployment

“…Besides, fundamental to a socio-technical system approach to infrastructure is the consideration that 'pipelines, electricity transmission and distribution systems, generating stations and other energy facilities have a politics or create political effects' (Bridge et al, 2018). Many scholars suggest that looking at the coupling between the biophysical and political processes, and how they are shaping and shaped by energy systems, further illuminates the political stakes of energy infrastructure Baka and Vaishnava, 2020) and the potential that infrastructures offer in creating new political arrangements (Rutherford, 2014) and actively enrolling different publics (Barry, 2013).…”