Energy geographies,interconnections,and embeddedness

Abstract

In this commentary, we make a case for the inclusive and magnetic nature of energy geographies as a strength of the subdiscipline and cast it not so much as peripheral but embedded within and across multiple other disciplines. We recognise that such embeddedness still raises challenges for energy geographers and extend Ptak et al.'s analysis by discussing two future agendas and routes to repositioning that we see as particularly relevant in the contemporary context. First, the potential for geographical concepts to become detached from or emptied out of their conceptual richness within wider energy research. Second, the enduring failure of critical geographical imaginaries to penetrate mainstream politics and practice within energy systems. We conclude by suggesting a way forward through conjunctural analysis and methods that confer not closure but routes to greater openness as key to gaining traction and contributing understanding that can be truly transformative.

Sitting at the frontiers of energy research are questions about how to recognise and bring to the fore transformative change that addresses not only energy per se but the wider social and political challenges in which it is deeply implicated (O’Brien, 2012). Ptak et al. (2025: 4) highlight the importance of energy geographical work in this endeavour, describing it as ‘an integrative force, a magnetic field of study functioning as a generator of convergent scholarship’. At the same time, however, they assert a need to centre energy geographies within broader human geography inquiry and address its peripheralization (2025: 11).

This hinges on two things: one, that energy geographies are not as prominent or visible as they could be within the broader human geography canon; and two, that energy geographical work is often subsumed within wider energy research. In either case, a lack of explicit alignment with or failure to account for such work as energy geographies is viewed as placing limits on the subfield. In this brief commentary, we work to extend and engage with their argument in two ways – first, by considering how the power of (energy) geographies may lie in its inclusive nature, and second, by raising other challenges and possibilities this may present for the future of the subdiscipline.

Inclusive and magnetic

The nature of energy as a ubiquitous but often invisible force (Shove, 2003) in the world is reflected in academic enquiry on the topic. Energy is addressed as an important concern across multiple journals, disciplines, and areas of teaching and study. In this context, though energy geographical work may appear fragmented and peripheral if focus is given to its explicit mention, the wider development of energy geographies under multiple different guises may only obscure its continued relevance and significance. Energy justice, energy transitions, energy infrastructures, energy colonialism, energy poverty, and many more prominent areas of energy scholarship are all underpinned by or at least infused with geographical concepts and resonance, even though many would not necessarily be characterised with reference to the term energy geographies. This may mean that it is not peripherality but embeddedness at play in the field of energy geographies.

Understood in this way, it need not be viewed as a problem to be solved but could be seen instead as a productive way in which energy geographies draw together scholarship from different disciplines to advance understanding of contemporary processes and challenges (e.g. Bridge et al. 2018; Caprotti et al. 2022; Kumar and Taylor Aiken, 2021; Petrova, 2018; Shove and Walker, 2007; Tornel, 2022). Energy geographies should perhaps be celebrated for what they offer in making connections across disciplines, subdisciplines, and wider areas of research, and explored for what this reveals and can bring to the fore in the future.

This is perhaps truer of energy geographies than other subdisciplines that address the topic. Indeed, energy geographies are without doubt one of the most prominent subdisciplines to have given shape and form to the wide-ranging and amorphous body of work that has risen up around energy and crucial questions of societal transformation that it implicates. This has occurred through a range of activities within the wider discipline, including dedicated journal sections, the substantial place of energy within major geographical conferences, and the creation of energy-focused study groups. It is likely that this is a consequence of geography's core focus on human/nature relations and its inherent interdisciplinarity, which make it a natural home for research addressing the questions central to much energy research.

Though Ptak et al. suggest theoretical innovation is one of the more problematic aspects of energy geographical analysis, for us, this is an area that exemplifies the core contributions. What comes through, both in this and in other reviews of energy geographies, is the ways that work within the subdiscipline has served to employ and develop enduring and cross-cutting theoretical traditions. These include, but are not limited to, practice theory (Shove and Walker, 2014), postcolonialism (Kumar and Taylor Aiken, 2021), science and technology studies (Birch and Calvert, 2015), slow violence and justice (Bickerstaff, 2022; Tornel, 2022), precarity and political marginalisation (Butler, 2022; Petrova, 2018), sovereignty (Castan Broto, 2017), and theorisation of affect (Pasek, 2025; Shurety, 2024).

Energy geographers have also connected with and advanced concepts from within the arts and humanities. This includes place-based historical research integrated with social practice theories and science and technology studies (Kuijer and Watson, 2017); historical analysis utilised in understanding fossil fuel phaseouts (Slothuus, 2025); and creative science fiction and storytelling used to imagine different energy futures (Pargman et al., 2017; Raven, 2017). These works draw out the significance of energy in its relation to multiple other processes, while engaging with, publishing in, or speaking to geographical concerns. Energy geographies can be seen, then, as reaching out into broader debates about energy and transitions as well as drawing in and on the wider concepts outlined above. This could be viewed not as a problem but as a testament to its value in contributing to the wider cumulation of knowledge about energy.

Ptak et al., in their discussion, refer to literature, film, and a broader range of sources that reflect an inclusivity in the subdiscipline beyond conventional academic norms of journal publication. This suggests ways that geography, and energy geographies specifically, already benefit from a wider inclusive approach to its scholarship and analysis. In turn, this perhaps raises questions about the possibilities for, and desirability of, disentangling energy geographies from the wider energy research field where much work relevant to (and sometimes claimed as) energy geography blossoms.

In this sense, it is precisely the things that are identified as a weakness that may also be seen as a strength of geographical concepts and ideas – that is, in their ability to cross boundaries, foster interconnection, and facilitate the surfacing of energy concerns within wider thought and scholarship. On this, the future of energy geographies may lie not in ‘carving out’ necessarily but in reaching into other disciplines and fusing together. In an era of increasing calls to interdisciplinarity (Khmara, 2025) and with energy broadly recognised as an area that benefits from, if not requires, such approaches (Silvast and Foulds, 2022; Winskel, 2018), energy geographies seems well placed to serve as a subdiscipline that makes space for such crucial ways of working.

Challenges and possibilities

Of course, this does not mean there are not multiple challenges for future agendas in energy geographies that arise with this openness, embeddedness, and interdisciplinarity. Only that the responses may not be in holding a distinctive identity but in allowing connections to be made and maintaining porosity in its borders and frontiers without losing critical depth or focus. In this final part, we turn to reflect on two future challenges for the subdiscipline and possible responses.

First, there is some evidence that energy geographical concepts and thinking have forged forward and become increasingly prominent within the wider interdisciplinary context. An obvious one to give focus to is the turn to place-based analysis and research. Research funding calls, papers and conceptual framings increasingly adopt place-based approaches, invoking foundational geographical concepts and frameworks in their wake (Energy Demand Research Centre, 2025; Marsden et al., 2025). This turn to place-based research suggests an infusion of fundamentally geographical notions within wider interdisciplinary research. However, there is a danger here that ‘place’ becomes emptied as a concept, being used to denote a turn to empirical study in specific locations, rather than a connective concept that confers attentiveness to relationality, temporality, and the more-than-human as articulated by those who have done so much to move thinking with place forward (Massey, 2005). If there is a challenge for energy geographers, then perhaps it lies in helping to ensure that inherently geographical concepts are not detached from their deeper conceptual meanings in and through wider energy research.

Second, there is the sense that the critical forms of analysis characteristic of energy geographies are still failing to instil or figure prominently enough within transitions currently proposed, enacted, or imagined in mainstream politics and practice. Energy geographies, of course, are not alone in struggling to bring more critically attuned ways of thinking to the fore of both problem framings and concomitant responses (Bulkeley, 2019). But the subdiscipline undoubtedly has an important role to play in overcoming these challenges. Perhaps it is here, rather than our place within the academic worlds we occupy, that our focus needs to turn.

Recent re-engagement in this journal's pages and others with conjunctural analysis and methodologies in geography (Lorne et al., 2023; Peck, 2023) might offer one novel way through these challenges for energy geographers. A conjunctural approach could build on the existing strengths of embeddedness and interdisciplinarity, whilst bringing to the forefront questions of the cultural and political work involved in articulating the current crises we face and their responses. As Lorne et al. (2023: 500) suggest, conjunctural thinking can take us away from ‘simply redefining subdisciplinary debates’ towards ‘following the connections and relations wherever they happen to lead’. This encourages a more unbounded mode of enquiry that suggests not closure but routes to greater openness as key to gaining traction and contributing understanding that can be truly transformative.