History of energy in geographic thought

This article was published in the Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences, and the attached copy is provided by Elsevier for the author’s benefit and for the benefit of the author’s institution, for non-commercial research and educational use including without limitation use in instruction at your institution, sending it to specific colleagues who you know, and providing a copy to your institution’s administrator All other uses, reproduction and distribution, including without limitation commercial reprints, selling or licensing copies or access, or posting on open internet sites, your personal or institution’s website or repository, are prohibited For exceptions, permission may be sought for such use through Elsevier’s permissions site at: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/permissionusematerial Solomon B.D., and Pasqualetti M.J , History of Energy in Geographic Thought, Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences, Elsevier, 2013 01-Nov-13 doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12409548-9.01282-3 © 2013 Elsevier Inc All rights reserved Author's personal copy History of Energy in Geographic Thought☆ BD Solomon, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI, USA MJ Pasqualetti, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA ã 2013 Elsevier Inc All rights reserved Early Research on the Coal Industry, 1934–1955 Fossil Fuels and Electric Power Generation, 1955–1971 The Birth of Commercial Nuclear Energy, 1951–1973 Modeling the Spatial Development and Transportation of Fossil Fuels and Power Plant Siting Resource Development and Transportation Power Plant Siting Socioeconomic and Environmental Effects Hazards, Risks, and Technological Diffusion: Behavioral Research by Geographers Since the TMI Accident Development of Sustainable Energy Resources Oil and Gas Scarcity Greenhouse Gas Reduction and Renewable Energy Development and Use Energy in the Developing World Energy Landscapes Glossary Econometric analysis A test of economic theory with linear or nonlinear regression and other multivariate statistical methods using socioeconomic and technical data Geography of energy The study of energy development, transportation, markets, landscapes, or use patterns and their determinants from a spatial, regional, or resource management perspective Location theory Spatial theory developed to solve optimization problems for selecting a preferred zone or location for a facility, which involves trading off transportation costs with production and processing costs, production balances, and market-delivery levels 2 3 5 6 Mathematical programming model An operations research technique designed to determine an optimal solution to a well-defined problem by maximizing or minimizing an objective function subject to technical, economic, and often environmental constraints Regional input–output analysis An analysis of the economy at the urban, state (provincial), or multistate (provincial) levels based on a fundamental identity that equates supply and demand using fixed proportions of intermediate inputs Three Mile Island (TMI) The name of the nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, that was the site of the most serious nuclear accident in the United States on March 28, 1979 Since the field of geography encompasses broad study of interactions between humans and the environment, the concept of energy has been operationalized and studied in several ways These approaches have included energy balance studies in geographical climatology, energy resource availability and conservation in applied climatic research, cultural geography, and economic geography of energy resources In the past few decades, new geographic perspectives on energy have been introduced from spatial analysis and modeling to applied, political, transportation, hazards, geographic information systems, global environmental change, and ecological economics Some of these areas are even considered separate fields Understanding and modeling solar radiation and the energy budget of the climate at a variety of spatial scales have long been central concerns of several types of climatological studies: modeling, synoptic and dynamic climatology, climate change, and applied climatology Analytical approaches have become increasingly mathematical over time, and this work has been somewhat separate from other branches of geography It is consequently more convenient to trace the evolution of the energy concept in geographic thought by focusing on the contributions of human geography, which initially considered energy from economic and cultural perspectives The article begins with a discussion of pre-World War II studies of the coal industry Subsequent sections consider the rise of petroleum as a global political force, commercial nuclear power, and additional work on the location and spatial distribution of fossil fuels A new period in geographic thought followed the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident in 1979, when geographers gave attention to technological hazards and risks of energy systems, the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle, the diffusion of energy conservation technologies, and the increasing scarcity of fossil fuels The penultimate section provides a discussion of the growing need to develop sustainable energy resources in the context of concerns about global climatic change ☆ Change History: July 2013 BD Solomon updated all parts of the text and references Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-409548-9.01282-3 Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences, (2013) Author's personal copy History of Energy in Geographic Thought and rising energy demands in developing nations The article concludes with a short review of the growing recent interest among geographers in an age-old question, the nature of energy landscapes Early Research on the Coal Industry, 1934–1955 Coal, as the fossil fuel of greatest abundance and widest distribution, has long attracted attention from geographers In the early years, this attention focused on the location of deposits and their transport and much of it mirrored the major coal fields of Britain, Germany, Poland, and the United States The accounts in geography journals were largely descriptive, economic, and cartographic Little or no interest was evident regarding the environmental costs Later, when the public mood shifted and impacts were widespread, more attention was paid to environmental impacts, especially air pollution and its dispersal, impacts of acid rain, landscapes altered by strip mining and waste heaps, and the forced relocation of residents This emphasis came with the increasing knowledge not only of the damage that was created by our demand and use of coal but also that we should and could something to reduce or reverse the impact it was having on air, land, and water From this point forward, research articles were much more widely dispersed, within a range of environmental journals and books, and the type of writing was more analytical Fossil Fuels and Electric Power Generation, 1955–1971 Parallel to the growth and development of the oil and natural gas industries in the United States and other advanced economies, geographers began to give more attention to the other fossil fuels, their development, and use patterns in the mid-1950s Another exciting new energy source gained attention with the commercialization of atomic power plants in Britain, Russia, and the United States during this period Nuclear power development attracted considerable attention among geographers in North America and Europe This topic is considered separately since the economics, spatial diffusion, risks, social acceptance, waste problems, and other dimensions of nuclear power were highly uncertain in the 1950s and thus it was treated differently Although a quantitative revolution in geography first appeared in the mid-1950s there was little evidence of a change in methods in energy research until the early 1960s Indeed, most geographical publications on energy issues in the 1950s were studies on the regional geography of energy (i.e., “areal differentiation”) Although important, this work was overly descriptive and often handicapped by scant understanding of the complex interplay between resources and technical, economic, and social factors in energy markets Several detailed analyses were completed on the oil, gas, and electric power industries of the United States, Britain, Europe, and the former Soviet Union during this time A few researchers went beyond the single-region scale and assessed the development of power interconnections in Europe, North America, and the Soviet Union A 1960 paper addressed the conflict between hydroelectric power generation and salmon fisheries in the Pacific Northwest, which is still relevant today This study suggested the use of (but did not apply) optimization criteria to help resolve the conflict The same year marked the inaugural publication of Soviet Geography: Review and Translation, which was to become a major scholarly outlet for energy studies of the former Soviet Union and its various regions Neoclassical studies of the regional geography of energy continued throughout the 1960s at a variety of spatial scales Several books and articles on the economic geography of the oil and gas industries analyzed national and international patterns of location, economic growth, development, and trade but did not suggest general market patterns The first truly international energy study, a book on the economic geography of the world oil industry by the British geographer Peter Odell, was published in 1963, just a few years after the formation of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Articles on coal geography also assessed economic growth and development but considered declining or less prosperous coal fields and their socioeconomic effects as well Political factors (i.e., national policies, government regulation, political stability, etc.) began to be mentioned more frequently in this literature but were still secondary to economic considerations Of special significance was the work by Gerald Manners in the 1960s to incorporate location theory into energy geography General locational principles were identified and applied to the oil, gas, and electric power sectors Transportation costs were shown to be of fundamental importance because they determine the energy facility location between a resource market(s) and final demand center(s) Also important are factor costs of production, resource availability, weight and quality, scale economies, technical efficiency, modal and interfuel competition, and the load factor(s) Similar principles were used to explain the changing pattern of pit location within a coal field The first such analytical, general approach for studying the industrial geography of energy was published in book form by Manners in 1964 (A 1950 book on the geography of energy by Pierre George received little notice outside of France.) Owing to data availability and the scale of the economies, his research focused on Western Europe and North America National studies and atlases for the United States and United Kingdom were to come later As the 1960s closed, a few prominent authors completed seminal works on the international patterns of energy geography A landmark book by Odell addressed oil and world power; this book was first published in 1970 and updated seven times The monograph considered this leading industry’s production, economic growth, and trade in the context of its prominent role in national and international political affairs By analyzing the global structure of the oil industry along with regional perspectives and company–nation state relationships, Odell provided the most complete story of this vital resource Three more general energy papers by geographers in the September 1971 issue of Scientific American showed the close connection between energy resource type and technology at the various life-cycle stages and the pattern of energy flows in primitive and advanced industrial economies Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences, (2013) Author's personal copy History of Energy in Geographic Thought Two final (although brief) energy books from the perspective of world economic geography closed out this period, both of which were written by Nathaniel Guyol One of these monographs provided, for the first time, a system of energy accounting that made it possible to compare energy statistics in multiple countries on a consistent basis, a subject he had worked on since the late 1940s An accounting worksheet, suggestive of a first cut of a simple input– output table, was developed for The Netherlands as an example The other volume was narrower but more detailed: a systematic survey of the electric power industry in 162 nations Important observations were made by Guyol on the regional variations in electricity supply and use The Birth of Commercial Nuclear Energy, 1951–1973 The use of commercial nuclear power grew up as the stepchild of the military program After spending an enormous amount of money to develop and construct the three bombs that were detonated in 1945, there was a concerted effort to turn this research to peaceful use There followed almost a decade of research and development that led to the construction of electrical generating stations at Calder Hall, England; Shippingport, Pennsylvania; Eureka, California; and eventually more than 400 other commercial units Geographers showed little interest in the dispersed siting of the nuclear research program of the war years, but afterwards they addressed the possibility of using nuclear bombs to reshape the earth’s surface, the location of nuclear fuels, and the siting of nuclear power plants It was electricity generation that was to achieve the greatest momentum as commercial enterprises began appearing in several countries: Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and later France, Germany, and Japan Researchers during this period published a steady, if thin, series of geographical studies, only rarely turning their attention to the spatial pattern of the fuel cycle or dispersal of the technology For more than 15 years, there seemed little uncertainty or public misgivings about the wisdom of a nuclear power program, and the geographic literature did not contradict this trend Industry, government, and the public seemed to all be moving in the same direction, one that looked to nuclear power to generate a growing, perhaps dominant, proportion of the great amounts of new generating capacity that many countries were demanding With U.S growth rates for electricity exceeding 7% per year in the 1960s, nuclear power not only seemed like the most likely supplement to coal-fired power plants but also seemed to be the eventual replacement technology as concerns grew over the pollution that such fossil power plants produced Moreover, it was recognized that by themselves coal stations would not be able to keep ahead of the tidal wave of demand for electricity The public, bolstered by the reassurances of government and contractors, regarded the use of nuclear power as the only way to meet the steep rise in need During the early civilian period, power plant siting was influenced mostly by seismic stability and the availability of cooling water Little consideration was given to isolating power plants from urban areas; indeed, many were located close to load centers, the better and more conveniently to service their needs Thus, the pattern that was emerging favored the densely settled northeastern United States and Chicago Gradually, additional power plants appeared in the southeast In Britain, all but one (in Wales) were sited along coasts France used both coastal and riverine sites, starting mostly with the latter locations, and in contrast to the United States and the United Kingdom, the distribution of nuclear power plants had no obvious locational concentration However, the benign public reaction to nuclear power was to be short-lived Modeling the Spatial Development and Transportation of Fossil Fuels and Power Plant Siting By the early 1970s, the quantitative revolution was firmly entrenched in energy geography Researchers began to apply several mathematical and statistical techniques to problems of spatial energy resource development and transportation, power plant siting, and socioeconomic and environmental impact analysis These important research developments, spanning the 1970s through the mid-1990s, are discussed in turn Resource Development and Transportation Beginning in the 1970s, geographers developed and applied a variety of simulation, mathematical programming, and econometric models to oil and gas issues Among the early work was a rather extensive analysis of North Sea oil development through 2080 A less ambitious study assessed the optimal oil pipeline network in the British sector of the North Sea North American oil industry studies also used mathematical programming models, with the site selection and storage levels at the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in Louisiana as an example Since the mid 1980s, a series of related papers have used econometric methods to update the oil industry models of geologist M King Hubbert This work often differentiated resource quality and used more than 50 years of historical data to assess the bleak future prospects of the U.S oil industry Somewhat less attention has been given to oil development in other regions A few econometric studies have analyzed foreign investment, locational analysis, and resource-based industrialization in the Middle East, other developing countries, and the former Soviet Union Additional studies have highlighted the main result of these developments for the United States: growing dependence on foreign sources of oil Mathematical programming methods also began to dominate research on the development and marketing of natural gas in North America and the Soviet Union Since the production of this fossil fuel generally lagged that of oil in the United States and was Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences, (2013) Author's personal copy History of Energy in Geographic Thought decontrolled starting in the late 1970s, new research opportunities were pursued for modeling greater development, especially in Alaska, and trade with Canada and Mexico Similarly, natural gas emerged as the fuel of choice in the Soviet Union in the 1980s In order to advance this research area, it was necessary to improve upon previous models of the pipeline network and capacities Following the decline in oil and gas prices and plentiful gas supplies in the United States since 1986 this research area has been largely abandoned Only one major analysis of U.S natural gas development has been completed since then, an econometric analysis of the declining yield per effort and resource scarcity Not surprisingly, the quantitative research methods that were first used in the 1970s for oil and gas studies also were applied to coal problems, along with the use of cluster analysis and spatial interaction models Given the wide distribution of coal reserves in the United States and their often long distances from markets, transportation bottlenecks have occasionally arisen Such problems are ideal cases for the use of operations research methods, such as linear, nonlinear, mixed integer, and multiobjective programming An early 1970s study of the Great Lakes region was a landmark in the modeling of the whole coal resource delivery system This was followed by a series of coal studies: regional industry analyses, such as for Britain, western U.S states, and Pennsylvania; transshipment problems involving railroads and ports; coal exports; competition for water resources; other environmental constraints; and structural and technological change Geographers, along with scholars in other fields, have also studied the development potential of synthetic fuels from fossil fuels This work has analyzed the spatial distribution patterns and development potential of coal gasification and liquefaction plants, oil shale, oil sands, and alcohol fuels The huge water and other resource requirements and environmental effects were given prominent attention These studies tracked the government policy interest and short-lived massive subsidies to potential synthetic fuels industries in North America in the late 1970s and early 1980s, which were briefly considered a viable alternative to the growing dependence on foreign oil supplies Among these resources, only alcohol fuels (from ethanol and methanol) and the Canadian oil sands industry have established commercial viability Power Plant Siting The siting patterns of electric power generating stations have been a major research area among energy geographers Although early papers on this subject were published in 1960, the vast majority of these studies were done in the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s Perhaps surprisingly, a retrospective discriminant analysis of U.S power plant siting patterns from 1912 to 1978 showed that fuel choice was more important than regional differences in the siting process Development of site suitability models for fossil-fueled and nuclear power plant location analysis was pioneered at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the late 1970s These and later siting models were applicable to efforts to avoid or mitigate inevitable locational conflicts surrounding proposals for many new energy facilities Geographers developed land use screening procedures to generate local site suitability scores by estimating a land use compatibility index and using importance weights offered by decision makers A large range of engineering, ecological, and socioeconomic criteria were analyzed These models were applied to the Mid-Atlantic states Despite the value of these methods for initial site screening, it has been noted that the approach largely failed to be implemented because of a lack of need for new power plant sites at that time On the other hand, the screening models amount to a stepwise heuristic and can select inferior sites Improvements to the method were made through the development and application of optimal transshipment and multi-objective programming models, which were also applied to the Mid-Atlantic region Another study considered the challenges in siting coal-fired power plants in western states, where there are stricter air quality standards The siting and safety of nuclear power plants received the most attention by geographers of energy during the early to mid-1980s Ironically, following the Three Mile Island (TMI) accident in 1979, North American energy geographers shifted their research from power plant siting to reactor decommissioning and radioactive waste disposal, whereas British colleagues focused on nuclear plant siting Computer programs were written in England to analyze alternative power plant siting criteria while emphasizing remote areas and the potential human dose from radioactive releases during accidents Government policy was shown to downplay the siting criterion of proximity to human population centers, and thus arguably safety, despite the existence of ample remote sites in Britain Cluster analysis was used to show that local population density received greater attention with regard to siting in the United States than in Britain Broadening this discussion from a Canadian perspective, it was shown that existing nuclear power expansion plans in the mid-1980s were not as robust as construction of small-scale hydroelectric stations Expansion of cheap hydroelectric power in eastern Canada, whether small or large, fits in well with plans for increased electricity trading with the United States Indeed, further study has highlighted the parallel socioeconomic and environmental challenges accompanying the recent “outsiting” of nonnuclear power plants in Mexico and Canada that have been dedicated to U.S markets Since U.S electric utilities had a greatly diminished need for power plant siting in the late 1980s as independent power producers and demand-side management picked up the slack, energy geographers abandoned regional siting analysis and developed broader, more detailed, and sophisticated industry resource planning models A few major, large linear programming (LP) models were built with a full range of technical options for meeting future electricity demand under environmental constraints One of these used multicriteria decision making and applied it to demand-side management planning in British Columbia, Canada Most of the LP models were applied to sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions control There was some limited regional detail to them, which overlapped with the work of regional scientists and regional economists Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences, (2013) Author's personal copy History of Energy in Geographic Thought Socioeconomic and Environmental Effects Research by geographers on the mixed effects of coal mining dates back to at least the early 1950s Initially, this work focused on the eastern United States, but by the late 1970s and 1980s it had shifted to the arid West (along with an increasing share of the coal production) This research analyzed the potential socioeconomic impacts of “boomtown” development of coal or synthetic fuels The declining economic fortunes of some of the eastern coal mining areas such as anthracite towns of Pennsylvania continued to receive attention in the 1980s Regional input–output (IO) analysis was demonstrated to be an especially useful tool for analyzing economic effects of spatial shifts in the coal industry Similarly, most coal research in Britain during this period focused on the uneven economic development or shift between declining and developing regions and a short-lived effort to revive the industry When U.S western energy resource development plans were scaled back, research emphasis shifted to the economic and ecological effects and control of acid rain emissions of SO2 and NOx This subject continued to receive the attention of a few geographers through the 1990s as the Acid Rain Program of the Clean Air Act Amendments was implemented, including (interstate) SO2 allowance trading Many energy geographers have examined the socioeconomic and environmental effects and planning issues surrounding petroleum development in disparate regions such as the Middle East, Scotland, Norway, and the U.S Gulf Coast The U.S studies have also considered impact mitigation in the context of the National Environmental Policy Act and the macroeconomic effects of a future large supply disruption by OPEC Econometric analyses by geographers for the United States have shown since 1989 that policies to expand domestic oil production would have adverse economic and ecological effects, though regional exceptions exist such as the current oil boom in North Dakota Although less sweeping in its findings, a regional economic analysis in Canada of potential oil resource development in the nearby Beauford Sea found that little or none of the net economic benefits would accrue to Canada’s Northwest Territories This research used a multiregional IO model Hazards, Risks, and Technological Diffusion: Behavioral Research by Geographers Since the TMI Accident Public disinterest in nuclear power was shaken by the successful campaign to raise awareness about its purported safety risks It was a movement that slowly gained momentum, but by 1976 an antinuclear referendum in California received ample public notice and approximately 40% of the votes Although the referendum failed, it was a watershed for the nuclear industry because it raised many more questions than the industry could successfully answer about the safety and the financial feasibility of the technology In addition, it prompted more restrictive and demanding siting criteria, and more than anything else it put nuclear power on the map of regular public debate Like colleagues from other disciplines, geographers became more involved, and it was a natural topic of interest because most of the issues were spatial in nature The increased attention by geographers first manifested itself in questions about the adequacy of the siting criteria that had been unquestioned during the previous decade Since much of the impetus for the nuclear debate had come from California, it was not surprising that the strongest opposition to power plant siting appeared there as well Geographers played a quiet role at first, mostly related to siting, but their participation grew as the public debate expanded to other spatial issues, such as radioactive waste transport and disposal, dispersal of radioactivity by air currents, and identification of evacuation routes that might be needed in the event of an accident These developments were all part of a simmering debate about nuclear power in the United States and elsewhere, but they would come to a boil with the TMI Unit accident near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on March 28, 1979 Ironically, Pennsylvania had enthusiastically commissioned the earliest U.S nuclear power plant 22 years earlier It was the TMI accident that firmly placed geographers within the nuclear power debate For several years, many geographers turned their attention to the myriad questions that the accident raised, including siting criteria, the dispersal pattern of possible contamination, evacuation behavior, and the adequacy of emergency planning and preparedness The effects that the accident had on nuclear power were fundamentally geographical Most noticeably, no new operating licenses were granted afterward, largely because of the elevated public concerns about the appropriateness of virtually every suggested site Emergency requirements that were promulgated became so demanding that power plants already completed (e.g., the Shoreham plant on Long Island) were unable to develop an approvable evacuation plan Geographers participated in these studies and were most heavily involved in evaluating and measuring public risk perceptions They asked questions about relative risk, the level of risk required to trigger evacuation, and the use of distance as a buffer to risk These issues came into play because of the obvious inadequacy of emergency preparations at TMI, but the interests of geographers were not limited to them Issues that had long been beneath the surface came into full view, and they included all forms of “nuclear geography,” including a striking increase in the attention paid to radioactive waste transport and disposal Although attention to these matters was initially concentrated in the United States, it did not remain within its borders Geographers in other countries, particularly Britain, heard the call as well, and geographers there had been making similar intellectual preparation to participate There was a different attitude in the United Kingdom, however, in large part because their system of government had not been as receptive to an open debate on nuclear power as in the United States As it soon became clear, its citizens had more practical reason for concern Great Britain is a country smaller than Arizona, without the vast distances and isolation possible in the United States Moreover, when the inquiry into the 1957 Windscale accident in northwest England was made public in 1988, it confirmed public suspicions about nuclear hazards and ill-considered official secrecy, a phalanx of geographers was to lead the charge for a much wider nuclear debate Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences, (2013) Author's personal copy History of Energy in Geographic Thought All the nuclear plants in the United States had already been sited by 1979, but this was not the case everywhere In the United Kingdom, for instance, great attention was paid to siting and safety issues of the planned addition to the Sizewell nuclear station on the Suffolk coast There was already a Sizewell A, but Sizewell B was to be a pressurized-water reaction of American design, ostensibly safer than the Magnox and Advanced Gas-Cooled reactors that comprised all the early British reactors In response to the work of many groups, and especially geographers in the United States and Britain, the government conducted the longest and most detailed public inquiry in the history of the country Like the TMI accident, the Sizewell inquiry galvanized geographical attention Soon, geographers in England were writing about waste transport through London, waste disposal under the Irish Sea, and elevated leukemia frequencies in Cumbria Perhaps due to the smaller size of the country, much of the work of geographers in Britain attracted more attention than similar work did in the United States Geographers regularly appeared on TV and in various newspapers and magazines, which gave their comments more visibility Eventually, geographers from Britain and the United States began collaborating on articles and books Even France, which operates nuclear power plants that are closer to London than those in Wales, was not immune from criticism, and although the debate was more subdued there, geographers tracked and reported on various acts of public opposition Attention of geographers to nuclear issues peaked in the early 1980s and then began to subside, only to be shaken into a higher degree of agitation in 1986 by the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine This was a far more serious accident, and it had global implications Climatologists tracked the movement of radioactive air, but access to data was difficult owing to long-standing policies of the Soviet Union Nevertheless, several geographers focused their attention on the disaster, with some examining issues of the power plant’s location adjacent to the vulnerable Pripyat Marshes and 90 miles upwind from the heavy concentration of humans around Kiev, others observing how land had to be reshaped and forests leveled for safety reasons, and still others focused on the forced evacuation of more than 135 000 people who lived near the plant Others were intent on observing the various political ramifications, including how the accident helped hasten the collapse of communism The Chernobyl accident also pounded several more nails in the nuclear coffin In 1988, Swedish voters reaffirmed that nation’s decision to phase out nuclear power, and Germans voted to take much the same direction The RBMK design used at Chernobyl was largely abandoned, and many of those that had been built in the former Soviet Union and satellite countries have been closed Moreover, attention to the various elements of nuclear power plant decommissioning and wastes gained increasing momentum At this time, geographers such as Roger Kasperson made seminal contributions to the understanding of social amplification of risks, focusing on nuclear power and high-level radioactive wastes Although it was obvious that nuclear plants would eventually be “turned off,” the questions were when, by what process, and to what effect There had been little public attention to these questions prior to 1985, but geographers helped bring attention to them during the next decade, emphasizing post-operational land use, transport and storage of the resulting low-level radioactive waste, the spatial and temporal sequence of targeted plants, and the socioeconomic consequences of the decommissioning process However, just when it appeared that nuclear power was about to undergo a major global renaissance, a possibly more devastating nuclear accident than Chernobyl occurred at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan during March 2011, which caused several countries to again question this energy source At around the time that interest in nuclear power was on the decline among geographers, attention was increasing in the area of energy conservation and efficiency It was not causative, but when problems began appearing and proliferating with nuclear power, several electric utility demand-side management strategies were waiting in the wings The logic was that if the electricity that nuclear power had been expected to supply was not actually going to be available, shortfalls would occur unless demand could be cut It was cut, across the board and across the country, in every end-use sector, with the most noticeable changes occurring in the commercial and industrial parts of the economy and gradual progress in the residential sectors as well Geographers worked with other professions to identify where these changes could be made and evaluated program effectiveness There were several obvious uses to emphasize, including increased efficiency in lighting, insulation, appliances, and transportation Development of Sustainable Energy Resources Although physical geographers have long included solar energy in its various manifestations in their work, only since the late 1970s have geographers actively researched renewable forms of energy Even so, this research interest tapered off in the late 1980s, seemingly coincident with the crash in world oil prices in 1986 This hiatus was short-lived because by the early 1990s there was renewed interest in fossil fuel scarcity, namely that of oil and gas Geographers also began to explore the energy policy implications of the growing concern regarding global climate change, with an emphasis on energy efficiency and renewable energy development Oil and Gas Scarcity Although acknowledgment of the ultimate scarcity of petroleum resources dates back to the 1956 work of M King Hubbert, who predicted with startling accuracy the ultimate size and production peak of oil resources for the United States and the world, there is much greater concern with its “net energy” and cost from production rather than ultimate depletion Cutler Cleveland and Robert Kaufmann, among others, in a series of papers since 1991 have convincingly forecast using econometric analyses that the amount of oil added to proven reserves per effort from additional well drilling (yield) in the United States will cease to be a net energy source early in this century This line of research builds on the work of Hubbert, who was the first to recognize that the historical Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences, (2013) Author's personal copy History of Energy in Geographic Thought production pattern would follow a classic bell-shaped curve, reflecting the interplay of resource depletion, real oil prices, technical innovation, and political decisions on long-term production costs Consequently, domestic oil discovery, production, and proven oil reserves are on an inexorable downward path These findings call into question energy policy decisions based on assumptions that these geophysical realities of the U.S resource base can be altered Furthermore, oil spills will continue to occur, especially in deep offshore sites, most recently the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, leading to targeted research With the conventional oil resource base increasingly scarce and dependence on it unsustainable, the cleaner option of natural gas has received more attention, especially since estimates of its proved reserves were greatly increased in the early 1990s Here too, analysis by Cleveland and Kaufmann is instructive Using a double-log econometric model of yield per effort of gas drilling in the United States, they found an exponential decline for gas discoveries not associated with oil fields in the lower 48 states from 1943 to 1991 Their model accounts for cumulative drilling, real gas price, changes in drilling effort, and shifts between onshore and offshore gas Thus, natural gas development lags oil but is subject to similar factors controlling its scarcity However, gas reserves have substantially grown again in the past decade due to the increasing use of hydraulic fracturing technology Greenhouse Gas Reduction and Renewable Energy Development and Use Coal, the third fossil fuel, is well known to have the highest emission rate of carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal greenhouse gas By the early 1990s, a growing cadre of geographers began to actively work on energy policy responses to the threat of planetary warming and climate change Indeed, they recognized that many preferred policy options also reduce conventional air pollutants and have a variety of other ancillary benefits These energy options include switching to natural gas, energy efficiency and energy conservation, and rapid development of renewable and possible nuclear energy sources (although no major energy geographers have promoted the latter option through their research) Three major types of greenhouse-related energy studies have dominated the work of energy geographers in the past few years: detailed technology assessments at the U.S national level, sectoral-specific studies, and foreign case studies One leading study provided an integrated assessment of the potential benefits of advanced energy technologies for greenhouse gas reductions in the United States The authors found that large CO2 reductions are possible at incremental costs below the value of energy saved, especially efficiency measures Many sectoral-specific studies by geographers have highlighted the technological improvements and potential roles of energy efficiency, wind, solar, and solar– hydrogen technologies in buildings, transportation, manufacturing, and electric power Much of this research has been conducted at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Since global warming and climatic changes not respect political boundaries, case studies of other nations can be valuable For instance, several geographers have studied the broad range of policies that would be required to significantly reduce CO2 emissions in Germany, Canada, and China These studies not only highlight the great difficulty of significant emission reductions but also emphasize the necessity to implement policy reforms outside of the energy sectors (e.g., addressing urban design and transportation policies) To accelerate the process of emissions reduction in developing countries and economies in transition, the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change approved a pilot program in joint implementation of the treaty, whereby two or more nations cooperatively reduce or sequester emissions in their countries Implementation of this pilot program was slowed, however, by concerns among developing countries that national sovereignty would be violated and that Western nations or Japan would gain a competitive economic advantage Geographers have generally been sympathetic to these concerns, questioning the policy’s fairness and cost-effectiveness, while identifying constructive solutions that involve compromises by the applicable countries Renewable energy technologies have different spatial characteristics than those of fossil or nuclear fuels (e.g., with respect to availability, transportability, reliability, and storage), which have yet to be fully explored Among conventional energy resources, the two renewable sources that are well established are hydroelectricity and biomass Hydroelectric installations, however, are not always sustainable because gradual siltation of their reservoirs may limit facility lifetime to 50–200 years Since the 1990s, hydroelectric power has attracted increasingly negative attention in the United States and elsewhere, where the large part of its potential has already been tapped Identified shortcomings include forced migration of people, displacement and destruction of salmon stocks, and downstream ecological changes Geographers have written several papers and monographs on hydropower facility construction in the past two decades, which have focused on trends in North America and a few mammoth dam projects in developing countries such as Brazil, China and India Research emphasis in the United States has shifted from dam construction to dam removal and downstream restoration Several dams have been suggested for demolition, especially smaller structures Of the large dams, the most attention has been given to the proposed removal or “neutralization” of Glen Canyon Dam (by W.L Graf among others), located upstream from the Grand Canyon Biomass has long been the major (potentially) renewable energy source in developing nations, and it has received the most attention among the renewables from geographers Most recently, focus has been given to the continuing development and use of biomass for ethanol and biodiesel in the U.S and Brazil Biomass has also received research attention in Scandinavia, where it is commonly used but somewhat controversial in Sweden Along with its relative abundance, biomass also has challenging limitations owing to its wide variety of forms, ranging from wood to crops and garbage Wind energy has been the fastest growing energy source in the world in the past decade, and in the late 1990s Germany overtook the United States as the global leader China, with an insatiable appetite for energy of all types, would eventually overtake the U.S as global wind energy leader in 2010 An important book printed in 2002 includes 10 chapters by geographers and others that compare and critique the varying prospects and policy approaches to renewable energy development, especially wind, biomass, Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences, (2013) Author's personal copy History of Energy in Geographic Thought and solar energy, in the United States and northern Europe Wind energy use and public perception in California, the location of its most extensive U.S development, have been examined by geographers in articles and a 2002 book that examines the issue of aesthetic intrusion on the landscape Extensive study of wind energy has also been done by climatologists For example, a 1997 paper analyzed the influence of climatic variability on wind resources in the U.S Great Plains, an area of great wind power potential Like wind and hydropower, immobility presents geographic challenges for the development of geothermal energy, particularly the pressure it puts on natural resources Geographers have given the least research attention among the renewable energy sources to geothermal (because this research area is dominated by geologists and engineers), after significant contributions were made by M.J Pasqualetti in the late 1970s and 1980s Energy in the Developing World Faster than other professions, geography is predisposed to grasp differences between the developed and the developing world— differences that are particularly apparent in considerations of energy The developed world relies on fossil fuels, whereas the developing world relies on renewables, including wood and dung The developed world searches for energy to maintain a high standard of living, whereas the developing world must sell its resources to stave off poverty The developed world worries about the environmental impacts of energy supply, whereas the developing world worries about having any energy supply at all The developed world has achieved a high standard of living by consuming prodigious amounts of energy, whereas the developing world resents any attempts to curtail its upward mobility by doing the same, even though the environmental impacts are now so much more obvious, troubling, and dangerous The developed world is in the minority, whereas the developing world is in the majority Such differences form the basis for much of the work geographers have pursued in developing countries Although many developing countries share a need to trade environmental quality for energy supply, they are in other ways profoundly different For example, China and Mexico are industrial countries, whereas Haiti and Ghana have primarily agrarian economies In the former, government concentrates on how to increase gross domestic product; in the latter, government tends to worry more about matters of day-to-day survival The work of geographers has focused on issues of environmental quality, economic growth, equity, sustainable development, and energy poverty in Eastern Europe and in sub-Saharan Africa The work of energy geographers in developing countries is often closely tied to environmental considerations China, for example, is intent on using its great reserves of coal to help fuel its climb toward greater economic prosperity As a consequence of pursuing this goal, air pollution has increased in many locations within the country, as has concern about the possible impact of such additional coal burning on global warming Geographers, among many scientists, have monitored such trends and have expressed opinions ranging from how one might minimize such impacts to suspecting that the impacts on climate change are insignificant Other topics of interest to geographers include energy trade and transportation; the use and scarcity of biomass; hydropower development; and the development of geothermal, wind, and solar power Of these topics, energy transport and trade have had perhaps the most natural and longest interest The focus of such attention by geographers evolved from matters of shipping routes and port facilities to the location of lines for the movement of energy by rail, pipe, and wire Shipping routes tend to change infrequently, and then usually as the result of military conflicts and new discoveries Modern examples include the closing of the Suez Canal and the development of oil fields in the Gulf of Campeche, both in the 1970s Geographers continue to track the discovery and development of new sources of energy, although such activities trend toward the expansion of existing areas of extraction rather than new developments Exceptions to this rule include oil developments in African countries such as Chad and South American countries such as Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia In the latter country, interest has been drawn especially to natural gas fields on the eastern side of the Andes, with the prospect of piping through Chile to the Pacific Coast for liquefaction and transport to markets One market is the United States, and Bolivia is considering shipping to a planned re-gasification facility in Baja, California, and then piping the gas to California In so doing, they will be avoiding the environmental encumbrances of trying to locate re-gasification plants within the United States while still having a U.S market In all cases, these and similar projects hold the hope for improving the economic prosperity of citizens of the producing countries, although the usual questions exist as to whether a significant proportion of the extracted wealth will remain local Geographers have noted this ethical issue and in a few cases have proffered recommendations Although these examples rest on matters of resource sales and environmental impacts, geographers have sustained an interest in the transportation routes, including the economic costs and benefits of the developing countries that are physically touched along the way Chad needs to move its oil through Nigeria, for example, and the vast resources of the landlocked Caspian Sea must cross through several countries to gain access to the sea, which is a diplomatic challenge Locally, Mexico and the United States have been working to establish closer ties through increased land-based trade of electricity, coal, oil, and natural gas, in both directions, across their common border This has caught the attention of geographers in both countries, who have pointed to the shared advantages Discussion have increased, as evidenced in the 2012 Presidential campaign, on the topic of “energy independence", but not just for the U.S., but rather for North America This theme has been prompted by the quickened development of the Alberta oil sands, the unexpected success of hydraulic fracturing in the enhanced recovery of oil and natural gas, and in the decline of the production of Mexican oil fields Hydropower projects always hold a particular appeal for developing countries Not only they provide electricity, flood protection, and, often, irrigation water but also they create jobs and national pride In developing countries, however, they also Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences, (2013) Author's personal copy History of Energy in Geographic Thought produce some problems that have not been as publicized elsewhere Often, these problems have been associated with the displacement of large numbers of people as reservoirs fill In the past, the most notable examples of this pattern have been in Africa and Brazil, but currently world attention has focused on the Yangtze River in China, the Narmada River in India, and the Euphrates River in Turkey Even in places where few people live, hydroelectric projects are often controversial, either for reasons of environmental disruption, such as on the border of Uruguay and Brazil, or for reasons of native land claims (as with the huge projects on James Bay in Canada) Although all these hydro projects have inherently geographic applicability, only a few geographers are involved in studying them The oldest and most traditional energy resource is biomass, usually in the form of wood from shrubs and trees, crops, and animal dung Biomass can be used for heating, cooking, and transportation Wood fuel use and sustainable development have been extensively researched in case studies of India, Pakistan, Tanzania, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Ghana, and Haiti Brazil, in contrast, has supplemented wood and charcoal use with sugarcane and bagasse for ethanol fuel and cogeneration The heat content of biomass is low by weight compared to coal and other fossil fuels, so for areas of quickly growing population many geographers have reported how such dependency quickly transforms landscapes, which often not recover their original appearance or productivity The relentless and growing dependency on such resources has secondary impacts on soil erosion, microclimates, and other aspects of local and regional ecological balance, which geographers have long noted and studied, especially as it pertains to the creation and implementation of government policies Developing countries are among the most logical candidates for the development of renewable energy resources, especially direct solar and wind power From a geographical perspective, direct solar power, either for hot water or for electricity, holds the greatest advantage because it is not site specific; photovoltaic panels can be installed and used with little need for local technical competence or development of a delivery infrastructure Geographers have written about the relative advantages of such sources of power for isolated people in India and several other developing countries in Latin American and Africa, and the experiences in these locations can be transferred to just about any place in the tropics Regarding wind power, geographers have increased their attention to the controversies over land use and aesthetics Energy Landscapes Perhaps the most recent topic to attract the attention of geographers is that of energy landscapes While they have been all about us for centuries, they have received, until recently, little attention The rapid rise of wind power has helped change that status because wind turbines are unavoidably visible and because many of the wind projects have created vociferous objection from the public Attention to energy landscapes extends beyond wind power, however, and now that the landscape impacts of energy production has acquired an accepted ’name’, geographers are starting to chronicle their variety and ubiquity In addition to wind power development, geographic study of energy landscapes now includes the massive oil sand fields of Alberta; the coal fields of Appalachia, Germany, and the Czech Republic; and even the solar installations in the western U.S., notably the California desert Just since 2010, geographers have turned their attention to the recycling of energy landscapes, particularly in areas such as western Europe, where population densities are high and energy landscapes can no longer simply be abandoned Further Reading Blowers A, Lowry D, and Solomon BD (1991) The International Politics of Nuclear Waste London: MacMillan Brown MA (1988) Market failures and barriers as a basis for clean energy policies Energy Policy 29: 1197–1207 Cleveland CJ and Kaufmann RK (1991) Forecasting ultimate oil recovery and its rate of production: Incorporating economic forces into the model of M King Hubbert Energy Journal 12: 17–46 Cook BJ, Emel JL, and Kasperson RE (1990) Organizing and managing radioactive-waste disposal as an experiment Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 9: 339–366 Cook EF (1976) Man, Energy, Society San Francisco: Freeman Cuff DJ and Young WJ (1986) The United States Energy Atlas, 2nd edn New York: Macmillan Elmes GA and Harris TM (1996) Industrial restructuring and the changing geography of the United States coal-energy system, 1972–1990 Annals of the Association of American Geographers 86: 507–529 Guyol NB (1971) Energy in the Perspective of Geography Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Hosier RH (ed.) (1993) Urban energy and environment in Africa [Special issue] Energy Policy 21: 434–558 Kasperson RE, Renn O, Slovik P, et al (1988) The social amplification of risk: A conceptual framework Risk Analysis 8: 177–187 Majumdar SK, Miller EW, and Panah AI (eds.) (2002) Renewable Energy: Trends and Prospects Easton, PA: Pennsylvania Academy of Science Manners G (1971) The Geography of Energy, 2nd edn London: Hutchinson Odell PR (1986) Oil and World Power, 8th edn Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Pasqualetti MJ (2011) The geography of energy and the wealth of the world Annals of the Association of American Geographers 101: 971–980 Pasqualetti MJ (2011) Social barriers to renewable energy landscapes Geographical Review 101: 201–223 Pasqualetti MJ (ed.) (1990) Nuclear Decommissioning and Society: Public Links to a New Technology London: Routledge Pasqualetti MJ (2000) Morality, space, and the power of wind-energy landscapes Geographical Review 90: 381–394 Sagers MJ and Green MB (1986) The Transportation of Soviet Energy Resources Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield Scott C and Pasqualetti MJ (2011) Energy and water resources scarcity: Critical infrastructure for growth and economic development in Arizona and Sonora Natural Resources Journal 50: 645–682 Smil V (1988) Energy in China’s Modernization Armonk, NY: Sharpe Smil V (1994) Energy in World History Boulder: Westview Press Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences, (2013) Author's personal copy 10 History of Energy in Geographic Thought Smil V (2005) Energy at the Crossroads: Global Perspectives and Uncertainties Cambridge: MIT Press Solomon BD (2013) Energy resources and use In: Oxford Bibliographies: Geography Available: http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/browse?module_0¼obo-9780199874002 Solomon BD and Ahuja DR (1991) International reductions of greenhouse-gas emissions: An equitable and efficient approach Global Environmental Change 1: 343–350 Solomon BD, Barnes JR, and Halvorsen KE (2007) Grain and cellulosic ethanol: History, economics, and energy policy Biomass & Bioenergy 31: 416–425 Wilbanks TJ (1994) Sustainable development in geographic perspective Annals of the Association of American Geographers 84: 541–556 Zeigler DJ and Johnson JH Jr (1984) Evacuation behavior in response to nuclear power plant accidents The Professional Geographer 36: 207–215 Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences, (2013) ... http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-409548-9.01282-3 Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences, (2013) Author's personal copy History of Energy in Geographic Thought and rising energy demands in developing nations The article... pattern of energy flows in primitive and advanced industrial economies Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences, (2013) Author's personal copy History of Energy in Geographic Thought. .. of oil in the United States and was Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences, (2013) Author's personal copy History of Energy in Geographic Thought decontrolled starting in