This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (public Law 111-5). It supports a workshop at the University of Houston, built around the theme, Energy Capitals: Local Impact, Global Influence. The workshop brings together energy experts in various disciplines, including the social sciences, history, urban studies, urban planning, law, environmental science, architecture, and engineering who do not have a well-defined home in the current maze of academic associations. "Energy Capitals" play strong roles in energy production, energy distribution, and energy technology. Cities such as Houston, Texas, USA; Calgary, Alberta, Canada; Stavanger, Norway; Aberdeen, Scotland; Perth, Australia; and Libreville, Gabon are representative of contemporary cities which are energy capitals. In the past, the production, transportation, and intensive use of energy also strongly influenced such cities as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Through past and present energy capitals, the workshop explores the impact of the recurring cycles of energy substitution on regions that prospered under an energy source that subsequently declined, or were stimulated by new sources. The long-term impacts have included the transformation of regional economies, fundamental changes in labor markets and educational institutions, high social costs in the areas of environmental quality and health, the shaping of regional infrastructure and the transformation of urban space, and long-term changes in cultural attitudes, and our work will place special emphasis on technical and scientific variables that influenced those patterns and transformed the environment in which energy industries emerged, grew, and sometimes, declined. Workshop results are disseminated in a volume of essays.
