This edited collection critically engages with an important but rarely-asked question: what is energy for? This starting point foregrounds the diverse social processes implicated in the making of energy demand and how these change over time to shape the past patterns, present dynamics and future trajectories of energy use. Through a series of innovative case studies, the book explores how energy demand is embedded in shared practices and activities within society, such as going to music festivals, cooking food, travelling for business or leisure and working in hospitals.

Demanding Energy investigates the dynamics of energy demand in organisations and everyday life, and demonstrates how an understanding of spatiality and temporality is crucial for grasping the relationship between energy demand and everyday practices. This collection will be of interest to researchers and students in the fields of energy, climate change, transport, sustainability and sociologies andgeographies of consumption and environment.

Chapters 1 and 15 of this book are available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com

Allison Hui is Academic Fellow at the Department of Sociology and DEMAND Centre, Lancaster University, United Kingdom

Rosie Day is Senior Lecturer in the Environment and Society at the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom

Gordon Walker is Professor at the DEMAND Centre and Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, United Kingdom