Editorial: Sustainable planning and lifecycle thinking of energy infrastructure

Energy infrastructure refers to the systems, structures, and facilities that are designed to generate, transmit, and distribute energy (Bridge et al., 2018). Energy infrastructure is a critical component of modern societies and is essential for powering homes, businesses, and industries (Goldthau, 2014; Pandey, 2020). The types of energy infrastructure vary depending on the energy source and other things in its value chain. For example, traditional utilities like gas and pipelines, power generation systems for fossil fuels and renewable ones, electrical transmission lines, electrical metering and distribution systems, smart systems, storage facilities, advanced electric and electronic systems, and various types of power control systems (Bridge et al., 2018; Pandey, 2020). In addition, today’s energy infrastructure includes many directly or indirectly related industrial systems and numerous interdependent sectors like transportation (electric vehicles) (Nallapaneni, 2022a), food and agriculture (farm machinery, drying, agrivoltaics) (Chand et al., 2021; Nallapaneni et al., 2021; Poonia et al., 2022).