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.KEY WORDS: Renewable energy, landscape processes, energy policy, landscape policy, research agenda Now that the curtain is falling on the era of cheap oil we are reminded once again of the vital role of energy for our existence. Even God appears to have understood the key role of energy, for according to the Bible, upon creating the heavens and the earth, God's second act of creation was to switch the light on (Genesis 1: 1 -3), providing a vital energy service in advance of anticipated future demand. 1 The value of energy is of course recognized well beyond the realms of science and religion. Shifts in patterns of energy generation, control and use are very closely linked to power relations, including conquest and submission, expressed in ideology, enacted in governance and embedded in national, collective and individual identities. Lenin equated communism with electrification; Franco-and many a dictatorial regime since-sought to symbolize the virtue of his regime through the development of hydropower. The restoration of national pride and political independence of postwar France was expressed through nuclear power. The big car economy lies at the heart of the American dream and national identity-something that Hitler was perhaps hoping to emulate with his support for the Autobahn and Volkswagen. In short, the use of energy in human society, expressed by the practices through which it is harnessed, transported and consumed, has always played a key role in the structuring of identities, territories and landscapes.Renewable energy, once...
