Recycling energy landscapes: Addressing the sustainable legacy of the world's largest enterprise

This article examines how energy landscapes can be transformed and how we can apply the niche effect of diffusion and adoption of innovation in recycling such energy landscapes into more sustainable reuse. As such, recycling our energy landscapes helps meet the needs of the present while incorporating prudence, intergenerational equity, precaution, responsibility, and governance. We examine how the energy landscapes of the present we are creating today can be reused indefinity for the benefit of all who come after us. Using examples largely from the United States and Germany, we address (1) an emerging process by seeking a meta-frame to encompass a developing and emerging field and (2) the changing temporal context by project cycle, longitudinal or intergenerational models. We find that the manifest benefits and critical needs for recycling energy landscapes are edging out the past practice of site abandonment. The enhanced recycling potential of renewable energy landscapes will add to the value we reap as we transition away from conventional energy resources.