Pollution, climate change, waste, water scarcity (water cooling nuclear power stations), oil spills, oil mining - which also applies to renewable energy with large solar farms needing space to operate

Unequal distribution of non-renewable energy impacts and responsibilities

Energy transitions are social transitions (Bridge et al., 2018) with an importance of thinking about co-constitution (the technical shapes the social and the social shapes the technical)

NIMBY effect against large local energy projects. It can also create challenges towards places where people have place attachments may not want large energy farms in their area - do not want their 'ideaolised places to become polluted with energy technologies'

Efficiency alone may not achieve sustainability goals (Shove, 2018)

Impact of everyday technologies like cook stoves

Collective living approaches (Bouzarovski, 2022)

Social injustice in transport policies (Mullen and Marsden, 2016)

Broader justice in labor transitions beyond job replacement (Luke, 2022)

This includes household energy, energy needed for the production, transport sector and resources needed to harvest energy.

Driving climate change with a lack of transitions as practices involving energy are deeply embedded into our everyday lives

Goals 7 and 13 of the sustainable development goals

“Energy production and use translates directly into control over space… such that… energy is an important physical medium through which to tilt the balance of power and exert control” (Calvert, 2016: 111)

It is becoming increasingly important as climate change importance moves up the agenda. Focus on ‘energy’ - an abstraction understood narrowly in terms of ‘the ability to do work’ constraining in terms of social analysis (Bridge et al. 2018) – the thinking space within people to engage with energy.

Although, geographically, the study of energy is being increasingly recognized as the “heart of the geographical tradition”. Now it is seen as the techno side deeply intertwined with the social and political side**. (Calvert, 2016)**

“Energy as a largely ignored yet crucial factor in theorizing contemporary social and political formations” (Huber, 2015: 1) Energy must be thought of through the technical side nd the social systems and shifting away work focused on energy as only a technical phenomenon

Shapes what we can and cannot do in our everday lives

Development was triggered by social pressure and new needs (affordability, reliability) - which only came through the initial engagement with the social

Energy systems and the technology involved are not purely technical systems, their development calls for political negotiation, social engagement and material and economic changes - that effect the social.

It is important to understand the processes through which environmental impacts of energy systems are created and sustained and how challenges might be addressed. This represents a useful and important perspective for thinking about energy systems

Rather than thinking of de-centralised energy solutions, we are focusing on large scale technologies that can be distributed through existing centralised systems

Space and place can restrain access to climatic conditions, and resources needed for energy production (particularly wind, hydropower and geothermal energy.

Recognizing spatial difference brings attention to the different priorities and understandings of energy problems. (Bridge et al. 2018; 2013)

Importance of understanding the enactment of every day practices in different places for energy systems across different socio-cultural contexts. (Watson et al. 2012)

Interconnections across space - focus on energy and spatial distributions can be revealing for thinking about energy systems and their envrionmental impact across space (Barrett et al. 2013)

But in places (seen more in the Global South), where not everyone has access to energy initially - we must prioritise energy access in order to improve livelihoods

SDG 7 highlights how more than 40% of the world's population, around 3 billion people rely on cookstoves which are regarded as kind of polluting and use unhealthy fuels

So we must be aware of spatial and culture differences and what this could mean for envision transitions to energy systems.

But efforts to facilitate the penetration of new alternative technologies for cooking have been really dismally low , despite global efforts at technology transfer. What this shows is the difficulty of supporting transitions to cleaner forms of energy in home cooking.

We need to critically engage with the way targets are set and the spatial boundaries that are used to underpin them - and the interconnections that obscure them

Ideas that we have for transitions will be possible at different scales, using different strategies in different places

We need to look at how energy is as a material, its physicality.

The reason is this has been developed as to highlight the materiality of energy, because it's very often that energy is being characterised, thought about and dealt with in terms of an abstraction and as a monetary equivalent (quality of dealing with ideas rather than events)

So it's often thought about in terms of kilowatt hours, temperatures or tons of oil equivalent or other units of measurement that we apply to energy.

Geographers are trying to surface Energy as a material thing.

With reference to specific materials that provide society with energy, and how social practices are involved in capturing and using energy.

These are shaped by social and material constructs

These are embodied aspects that alter our experiences with interactions with energy systems.

Geographers determine that the abstract is inadequate

People turn their thermostats up and down depending on whether they are hot or cold it is not a set value

Thinking about how we use energy has really important implications for what we do within policy and governance to address these major issues.

He uses this to highlight how these particular configurations also create lock in to the existing systems that we have (e.g. transport systems). He uses it to talk about understanding energy systems in this way can help us to think about the problems and challenges of transitions.

This is being contested, particularly because hydrogen is very difficult at the moment to produce in a low carbon way - and making low carbon hydrogen may just offset original emissions.

Huber also highlights how road networks in the UK have been developed focuses on connecting up urban contexts and the major cities. This greatly influences where people chose to live and what they chose to do

Electrification - exchanging one form of energy with another with electronic charging points at petrol stations fitting perfectly into existing infrastructure

Such as rooftop solar or the solar arrays, or simply solar powered electronic device chargers.

The materiality of renewable energy makes different kinds of spatial distributions and scales imaginable (e.g. decentralized)

They argue this is a distinctive characteristic of renewable energy that is not readily realised by other energy technologies,

Although, for capturable renewables, a particular landscape is required: places (narrow valleys for hydroelectric dams, uplands for the capture and conversion of wind) - which often isn't where the majority of the population lives

Explains how geographers have taken extensive fieldwork based research that examines how different places that are affected and shaped by processes of energy extraction.

Addresses issues including the political ecology of oil in Nigeria.

Social controversies over wind energy in the UK and the US, and also biofuel production space.

Also, those who remain in places who suffer the slow violence of landscape destruction, water contamination and livelihood disruption

He argues that this research as a whole reveals that energy underpinning our lives is often made possible through violence (physical and social) to both human and non-human populations.

Geographical work on energy justice concerns multiple issues spanning (Jenkins et al. 2021):

Work evaluating where injustices emerge (distribution)

Work identifying processes for remediation (procedural justice) in order to reveal and reduce injustices

Fracking was banned, but the ban was lifted by Prime Minister Liz Truss

Bhadra discuss the highly contentious nature of nuclear development and also highlights how local populations have been displaced, livelihoods have been lost, and those locally to these um, facilities have experienced other negative and environmental injustices.

Where these issues where these materials are extracted, um, the local people do not see much of the benefit, but they do normally bear the brunt of, um, crackdowns and violence.

Endres looks at how nuclear facilities and extractive practices, for example,

And he seeks to show how these distributional inequalities have been created and produced through social processes, um, that have made this possible.

Indigenous populations - evidence of the effects of acute and low level long-term exposure to radioactivity – e.g. cancers, blood diseases, contaminated landscapes beyond use

Energy justice as central to social justice (Bridge et al. 2018)

Ties between sustainable societies and ‘just’ societies – applied to energy (Agyeman, 2003; Bickerstaff et al. 2013)

Affordability – is it cost efficient and can all people afford to uphold the prices of energy to heat their home and cook food etc

Security – guaranteed safe access to energy, can be threatened by limited resources, political issues (fallouts between countries, worker strikes, political disputes etc)

Sustainability – can this energy be used in the future with little to no environmental degradation?

So such changes will create winners and losers, and that will be resisted by those who stand to lose or think they stand to lose for example, fossil fuel companies

A large energy corporation operating at a global scale has infinitely more power and influence that a citizen grappling with issues of affordability.

So you can't really trade off aspects of environmental sustainability with aspects of energy security, because at some point - the Environment will reach a tipping point

Many governments around the world are focused on net zero.

While some activists and scientists and researchers are calling for real zero (absolute zero.)

Stopping organisations from needing to engage with the more politically challenging aspects of behaviour change and demand reduction.

Dyke et al. 2021 - Concept of Net Zero is a Dangerous Trap
Completion requirements

Geographers have highlighted is that there are different ways of framing these challenges, and these have important implications for the solutions we develop.

Brings to light the ways that these different dimensions also inequalities and power relations and energy transitions can both resolve and or perpetuate injustices within current social systems.

Perspective that really illustrates how we might think about processes of energy transition, using geographical ideas and concepts,. It's a very prevalent and widely used theory of transition within um energy transitions.

From infrastructures of global economic markets, right down to user practices and everyday lives and the cultural meanings associated and attributed to energy

Defines a particular element of the system that is considered as the exogenous contexts (issues outside of the energy system e.g. Climate Change, Neoliberal politics)

Refers to existing and stable structures within any system that you're looking at. It includes both social and technical elements (energy companies, market structures or gas grid, road network) - status quo changes spatially in terms of materiality and socio-political infrastructure is in place

Niche refers to innovations, this is where this theory thinks that most change comes from. You need to have change in its inception happening in the niche, which can filter up to destabilise and reconfigure a regime in some way. So niche innovations can be technological, for example, solar PVS, or they can be social and political like forms of community organising (grassroots innovations).

And these all interact together to create change.

Is applied to real life examples to explore how technological change has happened through to bigger system level,

• Nurturing of RETs through the 1990s – Renewable energy moved out of being completely a niche idea and to intersecting with the regime in some way, resulting insignificant deployment of onshore wind.

• 2005-2011 onwards saw continued growth in RETs and surge in solar PV within Germany

Germany was praised for having major successes for developing low carbon transitions of the electricity sector (solar PV and wind energy).

Geels et al., looked at this transition through the MLP and argued that is happened through different phases that they identified

1970s Oil Crisis - created an early niche for renewable technologies

Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear meltdowns - hardening of pre-existing anti-nuclear sentiment amongst the public and within government

Energy companies, which would normally have been working hard were looking to the east and eastern markets so opened up.

Incumbent large electricity companies – the Big 4 solidify dominance intially

But regime backlash leading to a slowing of the transition

In the 2017 paper, they highlight that low carbon transitions have less momentum in passenger transport, looking at whether petroleum fuelled auto mobility regime is still deeply entrenched.

"These concerns have tended to circumscribe any formal attention to space, place and geographical scale within conventional transitions theory.“ (Bridge et al., 2013: 333)

Territoriality- social and political power across space

Landscape - assemblages of natural and cultural features

While justice is not defined in these concepts - it is implicit and comes through within the analysis

Geographical take on landscape is focused on the material features of an area of land (natural and man made) and the cultural evaluation and the attachments people place onto a piece of land

Energy landscapes (from oil fields to wind farms) are a product of social processes and the outcomes of conflict and negotiation

Energy system transitions require the re-appraisal of the form, function and value of familiar landscapes. (Bridge et al. 2013)

Outside of the UK, another example of this is the potential for large solar farms in deserts (particularly in Africa)

Understanding the emotional embedment to landscape can often lead to a more productive engagement in analysing conflicts over energy

The Multi-Level Perspective analysis of the German electricity transition misses any sense of emotional and cultural connections to landscapes that shape people’s responses to change and transition in important ways.

They can affect the effectivity of transitions and their level of just and suitability of the trilemma - let alone challenges that may arise from it

Relates to justice – not just about about identifying the presence of inequalities across space but looking at how they are created - moving beyond showing that there are differences in distribution and looking towards how and where these disparities are created

Bridge et al. (2013) highlight how energy transitions will create new patterns of uneven development

Convergence (erosion of difference) – growing energy trading, technological diffusion, and the standardization of consumption norms driving growing energy intensity/demand.

Example: Standardisation of indoor temperatures around the world (Shove et al. 2014) Driving demand for not only heating but air conditioning

The German case can be used to highlight the production of spatial differentiation

In 2011, Germany made up 1/3 of global PV production

Germany can capitalise on the emergence of new energy technologies - but there must be existing power dynamics, all of these are not covered by the MLP

Scale referring to material size and extent of phenomena (e.g. renewable energy technologies or government)

Assumptions about scale pervade energy systems but are often unacknowledged

There are dominating ways in which energy symptoms are scaled as centralised (large and not controlled by the people)

Re-scaling in the German case - from the national grid and concentrated ownership to micro-sited generation and distributed ownership

German Government creating mechanisms to support large scale renewable developments, partly about slowing the pace of re-scaling .

Energy transitions goals - The challenges for energy system transitions are characterized as a trilemma, balancing net zero targets and environmental sustainability with energy security and affordability (Bridge et al. 2018)

Transition scenarios (UK and many other places) - a mix of renewable energy technologies (in the UK offshore wind farms are prominent), electrification of heat and transport, carbon capture and storage (with applications for gas, bioenergy, and hydrogen). This is very centralised and technology-focused – it does not require much behavioural change and works around the way that we live our lives currently.

The 'net zero trap' - (Dyke et al., 2021) used as a political tool to offset carbon using technologies instead of just reducing initial emissions

Net zero encompasses the idea of capturing emissions, instead of directing us towards plans for transitions to decreasing emissions instead. So, Net Zero is politically allowing countries to continue with truly unsustainable choices – and masking it as being sustainable. This has been critiqued by climate activists, academics etc

(Bridge et al., 2018) highlight how this is related to the context for transitions in which movement towards any of the three goals implies a change to those existing structures and to the current status quo(e.g. fossil fuel companies and governments often heavily invested in fossil fuels like UK Plc and Norway for example).

E.g. consumer groups might be more concerned with affordability and environmental NGOs with sustainability, while government might be more focused on issues of energy security and economic growth favouring trading off environmental sustainability for example.

Energy transitions involve changes to the status quo and affect different vested interests (Bridge et al. 2018) Trading off between security, sustainability and affordability.

Social power is unevenly distributed - different interest groups have differential power in terms of their ability to shape and influence things. So, there will be winners and losers within these transitions, and clearly within this, it will cause resistance towards this change from people who are losing in this situation.

Some things cannot be traded off – if environmental sustainability is not prioritized, and if it is lost – we cannot fix long-term damage to the environment. Environment will meet a tipping point and once it is traded off, we cannot prevent it from worsening

Lack of attention to the social and political in general in transition plans, which has diverse implications for the policies and approaches that have been and are proposed

Highlight how existing global inequalities are shaping transitions in ways that reproduce uneven patterns of development

If we look at the case of German energy transitions as an example to consider how geographical differences have been produced in the past and are being produced in new ways through contemporary transitions.

We know that in the case of the German transition Solar PV has been deployed on a huge scale despite Germany not having a particularly significant solar resource. In 2011 Germany accounted for almost one third of all global PV capacity despite lower latitudes

This highlights that geographical differences in energy systems are not in any simple way determined by physical or material features of particular places but by their economic, social and political forms of development.

And it directs us to think about how contemporary transitions like this one in Germany might be both produced by existing forms of uneven development and productive of new forms – as for example, particular places (like Germany) are able to capitalize on the benefits of new technologies and emergent industries, while others are not.

Far from creating more sustainable and socially just worlds some current approaches and plans are simply sustaining current relations along with their negative implications for lives around the world

‘National and international responses to climate change are dominated by policies that promote energy efficiency and by people who take this to be a self-evidently important thing to do’

Shove (2018: 779) argues that ‘far from being a solution, efficiency, as currently constituted, undermines that which it is expected to achieve’

Relates to the ideas outlined in lecture 1 about critical engagement with how energy is thought about and analysed through abstractions – and how this has important consequences for what we do in terms of policy

Shove doesn't suggest abandoning energy efficiency but rather rethinking its application. She argues that we should use energy efficiency measures only when they are truly necessary. Additionally, she emphasizes the importance of adopting approaches that promote lifestyle changes to reduce our overall energy needs. This means supporting programs that help people change their habits and ways of living to use less energy in the first place.

Bouzarovski focuses his critique more specifically on policies of home (infrastrucutre) energy efficiency and he does this as an example through which to develop a critique of the ways that many approaches to transition continue to depend upon ideas of ‘transitions’ and ‘justice’ that do very little to challenge existing highly inequal neoliberal capitalist systems – or the underlying structural causes of high carbon and often low quality housing

“A critical engagement with dominant just transitions discourses and policies requires both a careful interrogation of the political economies of capitalism and a confrontation with the conceptualisations of justice itself” (Bouzarovski, 2022: 1014)

Bouzarovski argues that we need to focus less on the individual in the unit, but how we can look at living together and working together within housing.

Mullen and Marsden engage critically with dominant approaches in Britain to approaches to transition in sustainable transport – they argue that a tendency within analysis to only look at one dimension of the justice issues involved in transport serves to reproduce existing patterns of inequality

This approach to transition will reduce environmental injustice for those with highest exposure to air pollution (which affects poorer inhabitants of cities and towns the most)

On one level it has good outcomes in terms of environmental justice. And government money directed towards subsidizing purchases seems like a good policy both for environment and justice

Critique of existing policy approaches that privileges those with access to private vehicles and particular forms of living.

This is an environmental trade off for a affordability (causes challenges within the energy trilemma - Bridge et al,. 2018)

Shoukd we be looking at electrifying public forms of transport to make it more acessible and socially just?

Low emission zones and charges for higher emission cars is a direct injustice towards people who simply cannot afford a more economically beneficial car

Geographers have been critical of current ideas of ’just’ transition (Luke 2022)

Just transitions was initially concerned with replacing jobs lost through necessary transitions, geographers have argued for the importance of expanding concepts of justice associated with labour and transitions

We need to use transitions to change labour relations, instead of just perpetuating them as they are socially unsustainable.