Greetings everyone from a snowy University of Sussex, It's been a busy month at Energy Research & Social Science. I am happy to share with you the fruits of another intensive and novel Special Issue of ERSS on "Spatial Adventures in Energy Studies: - Emerging Geographies of Energy Production and Use," masterfully guest edited by Vanesa Castán Broto and Lucy Baker: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/energy-research-and-social-science/vol/36/suppl/C. In my opinion, it does an excellent job both evaluating the "spatial turn" in energy studies and in presenting a broad and global collection of case studies with insights across many disciplines beyond geography - especially politics, governance, transitions, justice, and sociology/theories of practice.
The Table of Contents is below. As always, happy to share copies of articles by email request. Sincerely, Benjamin Sovacool Editor-in-Chief Energy Research & Social Science Introduction Vanesa Castán Broto, Lucy Baker, Spatial adventures in energy studies: An introduction to the special issue, Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 36, 2018, Pages 1-10, ISSN 2214-6296, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.11.002. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629617303894) Abstract: This paper has two purposes: first, it makes a case for the development of energy studies perspectives that consider 'relational space' as a critical concept organising the provision and use of energy. Second, it presents an overview of this field of research with consideration of the papers included in this special issue. The argument has three parts: first, there is an analysis of the growth of relational perspectives on space and energy looking at current debates within the literature; second, there is an analysis of visual representations of different energy features to demonstrate the empirical importance of a grounded understanding of relational space; third, there is an overview of the papers in this special issue as a means to put forward a diverse research agenda in this area. We conclude that relational perspectives have the potential to inform future energy studies and provide new insights for policy and practice. Keywords: Relational space; Mapping; Visual representations of energy; Energy and everyday life; Energy geographies Spatial Thinking in Energy Studies Gavin Bridge, The map is not the territory: A sympathetic critique of energy research's spatial turn, Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 36, 2018, Pages 11-20, ISSN 2214-6296, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.09.033. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629617303171) Abstract: Energy research in the social sciences has embarked on a 'spatial adventure' (Castán Broto and Baker, 2017). Those setting out on this journey have started from different disciplinary and theoretical locations, yet a "map" of sorts has begun to emerge. Made up of epistemological positions, conceptual vantage points and lines of enquiry, this map demarcates and structures the growing field of energy geography providing a more-or-less agreed guide to the territory. In the paper's first half I reflect on the scope and significance of the spatial turn in energy research. I describe the map now guiding much spatial research on energy, identifying core ideas around which spatially-sensitive social science energy research has come to cohere, notwithstanding its heterogeneity and internal diversity. I offer a supportive reading. In the second half, I offer a more critical reading of the adventure so far, arguing that it is unnecessarily limited in its reading of space. The full potential of a spatial perspective for social science research on energy has yet to be realised. I outline three pathways for realising some of this potential - geographies of knowledge production, differentiation and disassembly - and show how each takes energy research's spatial adventure in new directions. Keywords: Geography; Space; Energy systems; Disassembly; Energy geographies Allison Hui, Gordon Walker, Concepts and methodologies for a new relational geography of energy demand: Social practices, doing-places and settings, Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 36, 2018, Pages 21-29, ISSN 2214-6296, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.09.032. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221462961730316X) Abstract: Understandings of space as not an objective surface or container but rather a set of relations that are continually made and re-made have become well established within the social sciences, yet they remain noticeably absent in how energy demand research is understood and undertaken. This is, in part, because relevant vocabularies and methodologies remain minimally developed. This paper therefore establishes a conceptual approach, vocabulary and set of methodologies that offer new opportunities for understanding the spatial deployment of energy. In doing so, it works at the intersection of energy geographies and theories of practice, engaging in particular with the concepts of place, anchors and settings from Schatzki's site ontology. After introducing these concepts, the paper outlines how they can provide a more conceptually sophisticated understanding of the energy demand dynamics of a range of changing social practices. It then presents methodologies capable of foregrounding the relational spatialities of practice and energy demand. It argues that carefully working through how energy demand arises as a consequence of social practices, and how spatialities of practice matter for understanding energy service provisioning, helps in developing methodologies that push energy research into refreshingly unfamiliar explorations, analyses and strategies for addressing associated challenges. Keywords: Relational space; Place; Methodologies; Practice theory; Energy provisioning; Energy demand Provincialising Understandings of Energy Provision and Use Idalina Baptista, Space and energy transitions in sub-Saharan Africa: Understated historical connections, Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 36, 2018, Pages 30-35, ISSN 2214-6296, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.09.029. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629617303134) Abstract: Sub-Saharan Africa is seeing an influx of international interest and investment in energy projects designed to address the energy poverty and climate agendas. Often missing from these energy initiatives is an acknowledgement that bringing about energy transitions will require more than just the creation of efficient energy markets and technological leapfrogging. This article explores how we may begin to add an historical dimension to the spatial analysis of contemporary energy systems in sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on the seminal article by Bridge et al. (2013) on the spatial dimensions of energy transitions, on energy geographies literature and on various strands of social science research on Africa, the article examines the usefulness of a historical and spatial perspective to researching how energy systems in sub-Saharan Africa came to be the way they are today. This historical and spatial understanding of energy systems is necessary if we are to make sense of future energy transitions, yet the connections between past, present and future remain understated in current policy interventions. Keywords: Sub-Saharan Africa; Energy geographies; Space; History; Path-dependency Dana Abi Ghanem, Energy, the city and everyday life: Living with power outages in post-war Lebanon, Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 36, 2018, Pages 36-43, ISSN 2214-6296, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.11.012. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629617304012) Abstract: Years of civil war in Lebanon (1975-1990) resulted in considerable destruction in its towns and cities, with significant impacts on buildings and infrastructure. Notably, the electricity sector continues to suffer from power outages long after the war ended, and the country's citizens have adopted various strategies for maintaining desired electricity services in their homes. This has given rise to informal infrastructures, such as diesel-powered generators run by commercial actors or co-owned by urban residents. This paper uses a qualitative approach to explore the multi-faceted experience of power outages in urban areas of Lebanon, the nature and practices of the resulting informal electricity services that have filled that gap, and their impact on everyday life. It argues that the different practical solutions that households have adopted in order to augment electricity provision to their homes create a differentiated experience of infrastructural services in the city, its neighbourhoods and buildings. It explores these impacts through three junctions: the network of informal electricity providers, new routines and practices of households and the objects and artefacts that constitute the energy landscape in the city. This research contributes to an understanding of relationships produced by these 'new' and informal infrastructures. Keywords: Power outages; Infrastructure; Lebanon; Urban energy Erin Roberts, Karen Henwood, Exploring the everyday energyscapes of rural dwellers in Wales: Putting relational space to work in research on everyday energy use, Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 36, 2018, Pages 44-51, ISSN 2214-6296, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.10.023. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629617303511) Abstract: Rural dwellers face a series of considerable, inter-locking challenges in the coming transition to a low-carbon society. As the highest emitters of domestic carbon per head of capita in Britain, understanding how and why rural households use energy in the ways that they do, and how this changes through time, is critical to gaining an insight into the ways in which we might reduce domestic energy demand. Although a plethora of conceptual approaches exists for enriching our understanding of the social drivers of energy use and demand, it is also important to better elucidate processes that give form to lives as lived in relational rural spaces. The article deploys complementary concepts of biography, practice and lived relational space, utilises them as part of a bespoke methodology for studying extended case narratives, and reports original analyses of more nuanced understandings of sense-making about dynamic changes in life processes and lived spaces. Insights are offered into difficult to resolve narrative tensions arising when expectations, uncertainties, aspirations and imaginaries work in a relational way to frame energy use in the present, and when socio-cultural ideals and identity-forming processes manifest in rural dwellers' energyscapes are involved in the making of the future present. Keywords: Everyday energyscapes; Energy use; Rural; Narrative Understanding Processes of Territorial Differenciation Lucy Baker, Of embodied emissions and inequality: Rethinking energy consumption, Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 36, 2018, Pages 52-60, ISSN 2214-6296, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.09.027. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629617303110) Abstract: This paper situates concepts of energy consumption within the context of growing research on embodied emissions. Using the UK as a case study I unpack the global socio-economic and ecological inequalities inherent in the measurement of greenhouse gas emissions on a territorial basis under the international climate change framework. In so doing, I problematise questions of distribution, allocation and responsibility with regards to the pressing need to reduce global GHG emissions and the consumption that generates them. I challenge the disproportionate emphasis that energy policy places on supply as opposed to demand, as well as its overriding focus on the national scale. Consequently I argue that any low carbon transition, in addition to a technological process, is also a geographical one that will involve the reconfiguration of "current spatial patterns of economic and social activity" (Bridge et al., 2013:331), as well as relationships both within countries and regions and between them. Keywords: Ecologically unequal exchange; Consumption-based emissions; Embodied emissions; Inequality Megan Davies, Mark Swilling, Holle Linnea Wlokas, Towards new configurations of urban energy governance in South Africa's Renewable Energy Procurement Programme, Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 36, 2018, Pages 61-69, ISSN 2214-6296, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.11.010. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629617303997) Abstract: The South African Department of Energy launched the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Procurement Program (REIPPPP) in 2011 to secure additional renewable energy generation capacity for South Africa's national electricity grid. The procurement framework included expenditure targets to drive socio-economic (SED) and enterprise development (ED) in local communities, together with requirements related to job creation through local employment as well as local community shareholding [2]. The article explores the opportunities opened up for alternative configurations of urban energy governance given the emergence of new dispersed and decentralised socio-technical infrastructure and the accompanying place-based investments by Independent Power Producers (IPPs). What follows is first an analysis of the relationship between the spatial realities of energy transitions and the political dynamics of the urban. Thereafter the article presents an exploration of the developmental implications of the programme together with three scenarios which might contribute towards enhancing the development outcomes of the REIPPPP, integrating IPPs into local economies or building sustainable energy democracies. In this way, we try to demonstrate how the expansion of utility scale renewable energy infrastructure might catalyse the emergence of new 'spatial imaginaries' [12] and the possibility of building 'new forms of collective life' [13] in South Africa. Keywords: Energy transitions; Development; REIPPPP; Urban energy governance C. Butler, K.A. Parkhill, P. Luzecka, Rethinking energy demand governance: Exploring impact beyond 'energy' policy, Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 36, 2018, Pages 70-78, ISSN 2214-6296, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.11.011. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629617304000) Abstract: The challenges of climate change and energy security, along with problems of fuel poverty and energy justice bring imperatives to create transitions in energy demand. Academic research and theory have begun to highlight the ways that government policies, strategies, and processes across wide-ranging areas of policy, from health to work and the economy, shape everyday practices with significant implications for energy demand. This brings focus on the role of governance in shaping energy demand far beyond what might traditionally be characterised as 'energy' policy. Situating these ideas in terms of relational geographical concepts of governance, this paper analyses qualitative interview data with actors involved in governing along with documentary material, to highlight four different ways in which non-energy related governance can have important implications for energy issues. The central contribution of the paper is to set out a distinctive analytic framework for making visible 'non-energy' policy impacts, which might otherwise be obscured within analysis. The article concludes reflecting on the implications of the analysis for rethinking the governance of energy demand to meet contemporary challenges. Keywords: Space; Relational; Qualitative; Invisible energy policy; Non-energy policy Caitlin Robinson, Stefan Bouzarovski, Sarah Lindley, 'Getting the measure of fuel poverty': The geography of fuel poverty indicators in England, Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 36, 2018, Pages 79-93, ISSN 2214-6296, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.09.035. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629617303195) Abstract: Recognition of the negative impacts of fuel poverty, a lack of sufficient energy services in the home, has generated considerable interest in how the phenomenon can best be measured. Subsequently, the most well-known indicators deployed in policy-making, the established 10% indicator and the recent Low Income High Cost (LIHC) indicator, have generated considerable discussion and critique. One facet of the debate that remains unexplored is the effect of a change in indicator upon the spatial distribution of fuel poverty. Using spatial analyses we interrogate sub-regional estimates of the two indicators in England, where the LIHC indicator was first conceived. Three principle findings are discussed, enhancing understanding of the geographic features of fuel poverty as understood by each indicator. Firstly, the reduction in fuel poor households has disproportionately affected areas with lower housing costs. Secondly, there is a higher prevalence of fuel poverty in urban areas. Finally, the condition is more spatially heterogeneous with fewer 'hot-spots' and 'cold-spots'. As a result, each indicator captures different notions of what it means to be fuel poor, representing particular vulnerabilities, losses of wellbeing and injustices. This has implications for the targeting of limited alleviation resources and for alternative national contexts where the LIHC indicator might be deployed. Keywords: Fuel poverty; Vulnerability; Indicators; Spatial analysis M. Pasqualetti, S. Stremke, Energy landscapes in a crowded world: A first typology of origins and expressions, Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 36,2018,Pages 94-105,ISSN 2214-6296,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.09.030. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629617303146) Abstract: One of the main drivers of landscape transformation has been our demand for energy. We refer to the results of such transformations as "energy landscapes". This paper examines the definition of energy landscapes within a conceptual framework, proposes a classification of energy landscapes, and describes the key characteristics of energy landscapes that help to define an over-arching typology of origins and expressions. Our purpose is to inform scholarly discourse and practice with regard to energy policies, decision-making processes, legal frameworks and environmental designs. We exam the existing literature, provide a critical perspective using imagery from the USA and Europe, and combine the disciplinary perspectives of geography and landscape architecture. We propose three main characteristics that contribute to the development of a typology: (1) Substantive qualification: General types of energy landscapes distinguished by dominating energy source; (2) Spatial qualification: The appearance of energy landscapes, ranging from distinct spatial entities to less recognizable subsystems of the larger environment; and (3) Temporal qualification: The degree of permanence of energy landscape ranging from relatively dynamic to permanent. Addressing these and a growing number of associated questions will promote more thoughtful protection of the landscapes we inherit while paying closer attention to the relationships between ourselves and the landscapes that surround us. Keywords: Energy; Landscape; Environment; Transition; Geography; Landscape Architecture Carla De Laurentis, Peter J.G. Pearson, Understanding the material dimensions of the uneven deployment of renewable energy in two Italian regions, Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 36, 2018, Pages 106-119, ISSN 2214-6296, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.11.009. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629617303985) Abstract: Drawing on empirical material from two Italian regions, we show how various material dimensions have affected the spatial distribution and deployment of renewable energy (RE), in particular solar and wind energy. The paper draws on an approach to the analysis of materiality originally developed in the extractive industries literature, including fossil fuels. The paper acknowledges that RE forms have significantly fewer material components compared with coal, oil and gas and the other extractive industries. Nevertheless, the deployment of RE, the process of turning renewable 'natural resources' into productive use as viable forms of energy through stages of energy conversion, storage, transmission and distribution has material aspects like those involved in the deployment of fossil fuels. This paper aims to show how understanding these aspects of renewable energy offers an opportunity to unpack and explain how particular RE paths come to be favoured or hampered, and yields useful insights into the spatial unevenness and variation of RE deployment at the regional level. Italy has introduced a system of renewable energy incentives and between 2010 and 2012 experienced impressive growth in the renewable energy sector. The paper shows how the significant spatial variation in renewable energy deployment in the regions of Apulia and Tuscany can be explained in terms of the influence that the material dimensions exercised in relation to renewable energy deployment processes. The paper suggests that understanding the material dimensions of renewable energy offers useful insights into how and why RE realises - and quite often fails to realise - its potential in specific forms, spaces and places. Keywords: Material dimensions of resources; Renewable energy deployment; Italy; Regional level Olivier Labussière, Alain Nadaï, Spatialities of the energy transition: Intensive sites making earth matter?, Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 36, 2018, Pages 120-128, ISSN 2214-6296, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.11.006. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221462961730395X) Abstract: An increasing number of quantitative works stresses that a main driver of land use change is the on-going large scale development of renewable energies. Taking this observation seriously, the paper's aim is to investigate the critical interactions with earth forces (soil, climate, ocean, air, etc.) that ensue from the progressive dissemination and scaling up of wind power projects. It is to assess how the wind power expansion makes earth matter and if innovative earth politics emerge from these entanglements with these forces. The paper assumes that sites have a strategic role as it cannot be learned from these entanglements everywhere. To this end, it proposes to articulate Simondon's spatial approach to the emergence of technological objects (from 'intensive' to 'extensive' sites) with Latour's approach to the politics of Gaïa through the notion of 'critical zone'. Two onshore and offshore wind power cases (France and Germany) are studied. Their spatial expansion interferes with polymorphous earth intensities (e.g. strong marine currents, coastal fish highways, moving seabed, large bird migrations), and raises critical issues about the fragmentation of the ecosystems. They point out the fact that these earth forces when observed, monitored and discussed could open the way to local experiments that provide them with a new relational existence and a new political status. Drawing on these observations, the paper challenges Simondon's approach to extensive diffusion of technological objects and emphasises that intensive relational work could as well underpin the expansion of technological objects. It also expands Latour's notion of critical zone in pointing out that projects scene are related to broader large scale environments. Keywords: Energy transition; Renewable energy technologies; Large-scale development; Intensive and extensive site; Critical zone; Earth politics Challenging Incumbent Regimes G. Taylor Aiken, One-way street? Spatiality of communities in low carbon transitions, in Scotland, Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 36, 2018, Pages 129-137, ISSN 2214-6296, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.09.028. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629617303122) Abstract: Community low carbon transitions - studies of the ways in which community is used to pursue environmental aims and objectives - are closely linked to arrangements of energy production and use. Community is used as a way to pursue particular energy agendas. Yet, as is often pointed out, the trajectory of transitions imagined, the ambitiousness of the envisioned transformation, and especially the implied community invoked within this, all remain gloriously inconsistent. Within community transitions attention increasingly focuses on the tensions emerging or smoothed over as competing agendas are brought together through capacious words and concepts: for example between so-called top-down government deployed community, and so-called bottom-up emergent community action. This paper offers one way to explain and explore these tensions, where they come from and, thus, help in understanding ways in which they may be overcome. Using the case study of an attempt to target one 'street community's' environmental footprint in Scotland, the paper argues for taking an explicitly geographical and spatial lens to analyse these processes. The paper uses three forms of space-perceived space, conceived space, and lived space-to outline how three distinct but overlapping communities were spatialised. The contention of the paper is that tensions in community transitions often result from different spatial imaginaries, informing one's approach to, and 'common sense' understanding of, community. In reflecting on the spatial implications different forms of community produce (and are in turn produced by), the article argues for greater appreciation of the imbrication of space, community, and energy as mutually co-constitutive. Keywords: Low carbon transitions; Community; Transition towns; Sociospatial theory; Lefebvre; Spatial turn Douglas Hill, Sean Connelly, Community energies: Exploring the socio-political spatiality of energy transitions through the Clean Energy for Eternity campaign in New South Wales Australia, Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 36, 2018, Pages 138-145, ISSN 2214-6296, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.11.021. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221462961730436X) Abstract: This paper analyses the spatial and scalar dynamics of a community-based campaign called Clean Energy for Eternity (CEFE), which has successfully promoted the use of solar and wind power on the far south coast of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. In this article we deploy three different approaches to understanding the role of scale; namely locational, relational and strategic rescaling. For the past decade, multi-scalar interventions by CEFE have provided a platform for community energy generation projects, facilitated by the development of social infrastructure that engendered new ideas, interactions and potentials, engagement and participation. These interventions have transformed the region's multiple, multi-scalar geographies of community engagement, energy use and climate change. Analysing CEFE assists in thinking about the relational aspects of energy demand, supply and use, as well as the spatiality of political mobilisation. As a grassroots movement that subsequently tried to scale up and out its activities, CEFE also alerts us to the relational nature of both barriers and opportunities for any transition towards a low carbon economy. Perhaps most significantly, the example of CEFE demonstrates how existing notions of the geographies of energy in Australia can be challenged and transformed. Keywords: Community campaigns; Multi-scalar; Social infrastructure; Relational engagements Heather Lovell, Veryan Hann, Phillipa Watson, Rural laboratories and experiment at the fringes: A case study of a smart grid on Bruny Island, Australia, Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 36, 2018, Pages 146-155, ISSN 2214-6296, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.09.031. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629617303158) Abstract: This paper examines the possibilities for significant energy innovation in rural locations in developed countries. It thereby questions the dominant framing of energy experiments and 'living labs' as urban. We discuss findings from empirical research with a rural community on Bruny Island, Australia, where a 3-year research project (2016-19) - CONSORT - funded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), is underway with approximately 35 householders trialing a new residential battery storage and photovoltaic energy system. Bruny Island has a problem of peak demand for electricity during tourist periods, and a back-up diesel generator is currently used to supply electricity during peaks. An alternative solution is being trialled through CONSORT: household-level battery storage, which can be drawn upon by the utility to supply the grid as required. In this paper we explore two energy geography issues: first, how global and national energy challenges are manifesting on Bruny Island through the CONSORT project, and, second, the ways in which the particular sociotechnical context of Bruny Island has influenced the CONSORT project, creating tensions as well as opening up opportunities for energy innovation. Keywords: Experiments; Living labs; Rural innovation; Battery storage; Smart grid Ping Huang, Vanesa Castán Broto, Ying Liu, From "transitions in cities" to "transitions of cities": The diffusion and adoption of solar hot water systems in urban China, Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 36, 2018, Pages 156-164, ISSN 2214-6296, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.10.028. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629617303584) Abstract: Urban China provides a unique setting to examine the urban energy transitions. Rizhao, the Chinese 'solar city' is known for the rapid spread and popularization of solar hot water systems since the 1990s. In this paper we seek to understand how the specific urban conditions in Rizhao have favored the adoption of solar hot water systems to the extent that we can speak of an urban energy transition towards solar energy. To do so, this paper introduces a novel framework - the Dimensions of Urban Energy Transitions (DUET) framework - building upon theoretical thinking of both transitions studies and urban studies. The Rizhao case illustrates the dimensions of the DUET framework, analyzing specially the dynamic interactions between urban development processes and energy transitions. The case of Rizhao shows that transition possibilities are continuously shaped by the ongoing conflicts and alignments between industry interests and territorial priorities. Keywords: Urban energy transitions; Socio-technical experimentation; Urban political process; Socio-spatial reconfigurations Conor Harrison, Jeff Popke, Geographies of renewable energy transition in the Caribbean: Reshaping the island energy metabolism, Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 36, 2018, Pages 165-174, ISSN 2214-6296, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.11.008. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629617303973) Abstract: Long dependent upon imported fossil fuels, the islands of the Caribbean have recently been targeted by initiatives meant to hasten a shift to more renewable forms of energy. In this paper, we provide an overview of this ongoing energy transition, focusing on the experiences of Jamaica and the Eastern Caribbean. To do so, we develop the concept of the 'island energy metabolism' as a way to conceptualize relationships between the biophysical properties of different energy sources and the distinctive territorial, infrastructural and geopolitical characteristics of islands. We trace the development of the prevailing fossil fuel-based metabolism in the Caribbean region, and highlight some of the resulting energy dilemmas faced by island territories in the region. We then turn our attention to the ongoing renewable energy transition, focusing on the opportunities and barriers posed by islands. We highlight the role of island imaginaries in attracting international interest, and point to the ways in which island geographies can hinder the transition. Drawing on examples gleaned from fieldwork in the Caribbean, we discuss the financial, logistical and infrastructural challenges posed by the region's fragmented sovereignty and island territoriality, and suggest how a metabolism lens can shed light on the trajectories of low-carbon transitions. Keywords: Renewable energy transition; Metabolism; Caribbean; Islands -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gep-ed" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
