The paper by Ptak et al. makes a compelling call to position energy geographies at the centre of human geography. For this aspiration to materialise, more clarity may be needed on what is meant by energy as an analytical concept rather than an empirical object of inquiry, and how energy differs from resources. In this commentary, I offer one possible articulation of energy engaging with earth's thermodynamic potential to generate motion, in contrast to resource, which frames earth as free gifts of value to be controlled and extracted. Such a distinction may open conversations about energy's relation with not just space, but also time. Further dialogue on the relationship between energy and resources may help clarify how energy geographies could offer something novel and generative in the discipline of human geography.
Alonso SernaL (2022) Land grabbing or value grabbing? Land rent and wind energy in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca. Competition & Change26(3–4): 487–503.
2.
BridgeG (2009) The Hole World: Scales and spaces of extraction. New Geographies2: 43–48.
3.
BridgeG (2009) Material worlds: Natural resources, resource geography and the material economy. Geography Compass3(3): 1217–1244.
4.
BridgeG (2018) The map is not the territory: A sympathetic critique of energy research’s spatial turn. Energy Research & Social Science36: 11–20.
5.
BridgeGBouzarovskiSBradshawM, et al. (2013) Geographies of energy transition: Space, place and the low-carbon economy. Energy Policy53: 331–340.
6.
CederlöfG (2021) Out of steam: Energy, materiality, and political ecology. Progress in Human Geography45(1): 70–87.
7.
CederlöfG (2024) Energy as object and relation: Thermodynamics, space, and emergent energy geographies. Geoforum150: 103968.
8.
DaggettCN (2019) The Birth of Energy: Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics, and the Politics of Work. Durham: Duke University Press.
9.
DunlapA (2020) Bureaucratic land grabbing for infrastructural colonization: Renewable energy, L’Amassada, and resistance in southern France. Human Geography13(2): 109–126.
10.
DunlapA (2021) Does renewable energy exist? Fossil fuel+ technologies and the search for renewable energy. In: BatelSRudolphD (eds) A Critical Approach to the Social Acceptance of Renewable Energy Infrastructures. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 83–102.
11.
GolroudbarySRMakaravaIKraslawskiA, et al. (2022) Global environmental cost of using rare earth elements in green energy technologies. Science of the Total Environment832: 155022.
12.
GrouppE (2025) Weathering energy geographies: Engineering meteorology in the north Atlantic. Environment and Planning E8(2): 575–600.
13.
HarveyD (1990) Between space and time: Reflections on the geographical Imagination. Annals of the Association of American Geographers80(3): 418–434.
14.
HuberM (2015) Theorizing energy geographies. Geography Compass9(6): 327–338.
15.
HuberM (2018) Resource geographies I: Valuing nature (or not). Progress in Human Geography42(1): 148–159.
16.
HuberMTMcCarthyJ (2017) Beyond the subterranean energy regime? Fuel, land use and the production of space. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers42(4): 655–668.
17.
MalmA (2016) Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming. London and Brooklyn: Verso Books.
18.
MasseyD (1999) Space-time, ‘science’ and the relationship between physical geography and human geography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers24(3): 261–276.
19.
MerrimanP (2012) Human geography without time-space. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers37(1): 13–27.
20.
MitchellT (2013) Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. London and Brooklyn: Verso Books.
21.
PasqualettiM (2011) The geography of energy and the wealth of the world. Annals of the Association of American Geographers101(4): 971–980.
22.
PelusoNLWattsM (2001) Violent Environments. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
23.
PtakTStockRSareenSKumarA (2025) Repositioning energy geographies in a time of crisis: Arguments from a subdiscipline on the margins of geography. Dialogues in Human Geography.
24.
ScheidelASormanAH (2012) Energy transitions and the global land rush: Ultimate drivers and persistent consequences. Global Environmental Change22(3): 588–595.
25.
SmilV (2018) Energy and Civilization: A History. Cambridge: MIT Press.
26.
StockRBirkenholtzT (2021) The sun and the scythe: Energy dispossessions and the agrarian question of labor in solar parks. The Journal of Peasant Studies48(5): 984–1007.
27.
YennetiKDayRGolubchikovO (2016) Spatial justice and the land politics of renewables: Dispossessing vulnerable communities through solar energy mega-projects. Geoforum76: 90–99.
