Classes have just started, which means thesis has as well. It is structured in such a way, at least my reading of the syllabus, as a broad beginning and moving closer and closer to a concise topic rich with ideas, sources, and origins.
Our first task is to start a blog. Lucky for me, my geothermal exploration in Iceland is to be the springboard for the investigation I seek to undertake with my thesis, allowing me to continue with this blog.
LANDSCAPES OF ENERGY or as I had phrased it in my proposal, LANDSCAPES OF EMBEDDED ENERGY.
Energy landscapes is a newly emerging topic, or genre, in the field of landscape architecture. There are spatial and environmental implications, positive and negative impacts. They are large magnificent devices the modern human race can no longer do without. They provide our platform for living. Population is to explode, as is our consumption of energy. Can landscape architecture bring in a vision of consciousness to provide efficiency and awareness in our energy landscapes? Would this minimize the impacts? How can it become more economical and create a system of surplus, not deficit?
Harvard GSD has a fairly new publication call "New Geographies". Their last issue (the second one published I believe) is from 2009 and is called "Landscapes of Energy". It covers a wide range of topics associated with this genre. A lot of the essays deal with oil landscapes. Geothermal is somewhat derivative of oil exploration and consumption, as the same technology is used, with much less pollution and contamination involved. Some touch on social and economic issues, urbanism and technology, with a dash of renewable energy. Little to nothing is said about geothermal energy. This could make my argument more valid because of the need for this, but also more difficult. It is only the beginning.
One of the essays titled "Energy as a Spatial Project" written by Rania Ghosn provides a fantastic overview of the issues at hand and how we need to begin seeing energy landscapes as spatial condition- not just productive lands, but lands that are part of where we live. The beginning of this article says it quite well:
"Energy needs space. It exploits space as a resource, a site of production, a transportation channel, an environment for consumption, and a place for capital accumulation. Whether oil pipelines, dams, solar panels, nuclear plants, or wind parks, all industrial energy systems deploy space, capital, and technology to construct their geographies of power and inscribe their technological order as a mode of organization of social, economic, and political relations. Popular taxonomies of energy have tended, however, to blur the distinctions between different modes and instead emphasize a renewable/nonrenewable binary that dismisses continuities between the conventional and its alternatives in an anticipation of a future beyond oil. Although essential to the production of energy, space has played a role in the myth of ecologically benign economic growth, because the creation of value in energy regimes has long internalized benefits and accrued them to the urban center while 'externalizing' costs-sliding them to the periphery, out of sight".
If we reconfigure the source, the distribution pattern, the efficiency, do our cities become reconfigured? I think that energy landscapes are the source of current human civilization. If they become reconsidered as a piece of land that is just as important as the land in which our cities sit upon, how would attitudes change?
It will be exciting to embark on this exploration of what geothermal is and what its potential can be, with Iceland as the one who holds itself high as the leader in its technology and use.
Image 1: "New Geographies: Landscapes of Energy" cover
Image 2: "What is American Power?" by Mitch Epstein from website: http://www.thethirdray.com/
Image 3: Light Pollution in USA: http://conservationreport.com/2009/03/08/light-pollution-to-increase-as-population-and-energy-use-increases/
Image 4: A wind farm at Barão de São João, south of Lisbon: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/science/earth/10portugal.html?_r=3&pagewanted=1&hp
Image 5: Nesjavellir Pipe and Power Lines: Power and hot water travel approximately 30 kilometers to the Reykjavik area
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