Introduction: Landscapes of Energies

Abstract

The international Kyoto process and the work of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have progressively presented the evidence of global warming as the future and most urgent challenge for humanity. National and supra-national renewable energy policies are at the core of the strategies developed in order to face it. The ongoing changes in the energy mix, which include an increase in the share of renewable energy, triggers a new interest in the landscape-energy relationship. Renewable energy is widely and unevenly dispersed across the land. Their spatial impacts and decentralized energy infrastructures can be significant, highly perceptible and regarded as the re-composition of socio-technical links between landscape and energy. Landscape has become a key arena for the debate on energy policy. The reverse is also true. Energy issues might bring new dimensions into landscape policies and processes. There can be very little doubt that energy will remain the number one driver for landscape transformation in the 21st century. This editorial discusses the empirical and theoretical potential of developing research works at the crossroads of landscapes and energies, and ventures a tentative agenda for what can be termed the ‘‘landscapes of energies''. The papers gathered in this special issue all explore the evolving relationship between landscape and energy, albeit from different angles. They capture, together, some of the richness of this emerging research field.

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