Geographies of energy transition: Space, place and the low-carbon economy

By G. Bridge, Stefan Bouzarovski, M. Bradshaw, N. Eyre. 2013

1,330 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper makes a case for examining energy transition as a geographical process, involving the reconfiguration of current patterns and scales of economic and social activity. The paper draws on a seminar series on the ‘Geographies of Energy Transition: security, climate, governance' hosted by the authors between 2009 and 2011, which initiated a dialogue between energy studies and the discipline of human geography. Focussing on the UK Government's policy for a low carbon transition, the paper provides a conceptual language with which to describe and assess the geographical implications of a transition towards low carbon energy. Six concepts are introduced and explained: location, landscape, territoriality, spatial differentiation, scaling, and spatial embeddedness. Examples illustrate how the geographies of a future low-carbon economy are not yet determined and that a range of divergent – and contending – potential geographical futures are in play. More attention to the spaces and places that transition to a low-carbon economy will produce can help better understand what living in a low-carbon economy will be like. It also provides a way to help evaluate the choices and pathways available.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Pollution, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7555821006210ce80aa22de90b67a3608a5b9380

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Global and Planetary Change

1. P. Newell
2. A. Wieczorek
3. L. Gailing
4. G. Bridge
5. Lucy Baker
6. Adrian Smith
7. Frank W. Geels
8. Lars Coenen

In Pollution

1. L. Gailing
2. A. Wieczorek
3. G. Bridge
4. Lucy Baker
5. P. Newell
6. Arica Crootof
7. Karen E. Rignall
8. Nazmiye Balta-Ozkan

In Sociology and Political Science

1. P. Newell
2. A. Wieczorek
3. L. Gailing
4. Frank W. Geels
5. G. Bridge
6. Lucy Baker
7. Adrian Smith
8. Karen E. Rignall

Citations in the corpus

• New energy spaces: Towards a geographical political economy of energy transition (2020, methodology): “Table 1 is informed by the preliminary framework outlined in this Editorial and by recent work conceptualizing the geographies and dynamics of energy transitions (Balmaceda et al., 2019; Becker et al., 2016; Bridge et al., 2013, 2018; Gailing et al., 2019; Labussi ere and Nadaı̈, 2018).”
• Reconfiguring Urban Sustainability Transitions, Analysing Multiplicity (2017, background): “) within a particular space but also geographical interconnections between that space and other spaces [7].”
• Renewable energy and geopolitics: A review (2020, background): “[45]), political geography has highlighted many important considerations that energy security and geopolitical analyses should take into account.”
• Shale gas policy in the United Kingdom: An argumentative discourse analysis (2014, background): “Bridge et al. (2013) argue that the language of energy transitions is commonly framed in the context of socio-technical systems.”
• Global changes in residential energy consumption (2017, background): “Therefore, much more research on geographical differences is needed (Bridge et al., 2013).”
• A socioecological fix to capitalist crisis and climate change? The possibilities and limits of renewable energy (2015, background): “Hidden within that figure, of course, are questions of precisely which 2% it would be, who is using that land now, whether other land uses could be intermixed or would be rendered impossible, and the politics of such determinations (see Bridge et al., 2013; Calvert, 2015).”
• Policy activism and regional path creation: the promotion of offshore wind in North East England and Scotland (2015, background): “In particular, the paper adds to the growing work in economic geography and sustainability transitions research which provides a local and regional dimension to the predominantly national focus of energy debates (Bridge et al 2013; Hansen and Coenen 2013; Smith; 2007).”
• Solar power, state power, and the politics of energy transition in pre-Saharan Morocco (2016, background): “The landscapes called on to support a low carbon transition are highly contested, and large-scale renewable energy projects often exacerbate existing inequalities because they rely on land governance regimes rooted in a history of dispossession or extraction (Boyer, 2014; Bridge et al., 2013).”
• Innovation Policy for Grand Challenges. An Economic Geography Perspective (2015, background): “To exemplify, Bridge et al. (2013) propose that the diffusion potential of renewable energy technologies is culturally contingent as it depends on localised cultural routines.”