Reading 2

• Energy availability and consumption establish the parameters around the type of lifestyle which are possible, while socioeconomic and political system guide the resources from which energy is harvested (Calvert, 2016)
• Patterns of energy use and production are undergoing fundamental change constantly due to geographical constrains on conventional energies, social concerns over energy security and climate change and technological advances in energy recovery. Two shifts are occurring – towards renewable energy and unconventional fossil fuels (Calvert, 2016)
• Geographical approaches to energy are best conceived as an academic borderland where sometimes disjointed systems of geographical thought converge to study past, current and future patterns of energy systems at a range of scales (Calvert, 2016)
• Energy geographers are in a research funding environment which favours multidisciplinary research, however, also must ensure that their research meets the expectations of the geography community (Calvert, 2016)
• Systems of energy provision underpin how societies perceive and behave in their surroundings – e.g. electricity drove urbanisation, internal combustion engines drove fast national and then global travel, and the development of air conditioning led to new thermal comfort standards (Calvert, 2016)
• Energy is a political resource:

  • Prospects for new flows of energy bring together social groups into conversations about allocation, costs and benefits and acceptable uses
  • The development of energy infrastructure has implications for people not spread evenly across space
  • Energy production and use translates directly into control over space – energy is an important physical medium through which to tilt the balance of power and exert social control
  • (Calvert, 2016)
• Fossil fuels, mostly oil, are the dominant commodity in global trade networks. Oil companies are most worried about above ground sources of scarcity than about resource scarcity in a geological sense. Supply lines are therefore made more secure through spatial fixes which can reconfigure geopolitical relations, e.g. the Suez crisis of the 1950s closed a crucial chokepoint in oil transport which caused investment in super-tankers which could carry a lot of oil around the African continent, which then drove piracy in the region. (Calvert, 2016)
• Unconventional fossil fuels have contributed to the growth in natural gas and oil use, particularly because they are located in “spatially safe” locations – e.g. oil sand deposits in Canada. However, these areas are involved in land—claim disputes along pipeline routes, conflicts around ecological threats and the extent to which local citizens will need to bear these costs (Calvert, 2016)
• Social resistance to transitions tends to be the most pronounced when unfamiliar landscape impacts are not balanced through acceptable levels of local consultation or fair distribution of costs and benefits (Calvert, 2016)
• Energy transitions are social-material transitions because they involve users and institutions alongside infrastructure and natural resources – resources and technology alone cannot explain the evolution of energy systems (Calvert, 2016)
• Concepts and techniques from traditional regional geography or area studies are often used to investigate unique regional geographies, e.g infrastructure, land cover, bio productivity, economic activities, spatial identities, land use (Calvert, 2016)
• The use of GIS and remote sensing is influential in understanding alternative energy futures, mostly focusing on geo-economic criteria for evaluating resource options but also more recently on understanding the non-monetary merits of multiple resource/technology options in an area, particularly to achieve 100% renewable energy systems and local energy independence while limiting land use changes and ensuring ecosystem functioning (Calvert, 2016)
• Geospatial concepts and technologies can be used to forecast tensions emerging between energy production and land use as a function of renewable energy development. Energy resource mapping exercises should work to empower local decision-makers given the added burden they experience. (Calvert, 2016)