Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 31
Energy Transformations and
Geographic Research
Scott Jiusto
Introduction
The challenge of fostering just and sustainable societies cannot be met without
fundamentally transforming global energy systems. Socio-ecological contradictions
are increasingly apparent in 'conventional' energy systems predicated on exponen-
tially growing demand met principally through expanding supplies of fossil fuels
and massive nuclear and hydropower projects. Energy underwrites developmental
aspirations, yet the twin specters of climate change and oil wars are generating
public support for alternative energy systems with potential also to reduce related
problems of smog, respiratory disease, acid rain, strip mining, oil spills, forced rural
resettlement, and inequities in access to energy services. Despite these problems,
virtually all 'business as usual' forecasts expect continued rapid growth in energy
consumption and production regimes, refl ecting the socio-economic power imparted
to the network of technologies, policies, institutions, and practices that constitute
conventional energy systems. These networks of power are continuously contested
and reproduced, however, and just as key social movements of the 19th and 20th
centuries were built largely on challenging the labour, environmental, and fi nancial
practices of coal and oil industries, so the nascent 'sustainable energy' movement
presents a potential vehicle for contesting global inequality and underdevelopment
in the present century.
With so much at stake and with such strong implications for virtually every fi eld
of geographic scholarship, it is surprising how little geographic research focuses
squarely on energy issues. This disinclination may refl ect a mismatch between the
heterogeneous, social-theoretically informed methods and concerns of geographic
scholarship and the all-too-often technical and economistic nature of social science
energy research. Climate change concerns, however, have opened up new space for
contesting energy policy and investment decisions around the world in ways that
will shape the meaning and prospects for sustainability in human-environment
systems. While geographers productively study energy issues from many perspec-
tives (see review by Solomon et al. 2004), this chapter emphasises research that
treats energy system sustainability as a contestable process in which political-
economic and cultural factors co-evolve with changes in the quality, location, and
environmental impact of energy resources.
