ABSTRACT
This chapter develops a socio-technical systems perspective on global energy. It takes inspiration from infrastructure studies in science and technology studies (STS) and the history of technology, and from an understanding of geopolitics as the politics of space, distance, connections and materiality in a wide sense. The prefix “geo” is “earth” in Latin, but the geopolitics of energy is not only about the energy that is in and on the Earth – fossil fuels, uranium, forests, winds and waves. It is about long-distance movements of energy; it is about the tanker ships, the pipelines and the transmission lines needed for this trade to be feasible, and about the places where energy in its various forms is produced, refined, stored and consumed. Energy and geopolitics, it is argued, are characterized by “messy complexity”, and a systems approach helps us to bring analytical order and discern the most important patterns in this complex – and exciting! – world.
