New Trends and Challenges for Energy Geographies: Introduction to the Special Issue

In 1961, the Canadian geographer John D. Chapman recognized the rapid growth in demand for inanimate energy and the role geographers could be playing in explaining its patterns and importance in the growing world economy (Chapman, 1961). Fifty years later, Karl Zimmerer (2011) introduced a Special Issue of the Annals of the Association of American Geographers by noting that not only had Chapman’s prediction come true but that geographers were studying even a wider spectrum of energy challenges than Chapman could ever have imagined (see e.g. Dorian et al., 2006; Florini, Sovaccol, 2009).