Storage plays an important role in managing global resources, from energy and water to carbon and data, shaping landscapes, supply chains, and environmental systems.
Sayd Randle from Singapore Management University investigates resource storage, examining its types—including stockpiling, warehousing, and containment—and their impacts on socio-economic and environmental systems. Her research highlights how storage is not just a logistical necessity but a key force in addressing modern challenges like climate change and resource sustainability.
Read the original research: doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12733
Image credit: Adobe Stock / SGr
Transcript:
Hello and welcome to ResearchPod. Thank you for listening and joining us today.
Did you know that in 2024, the UK wasted more than a billion pounds by turning off wind turbines? But, why did they waste all this energy and money? The short answer is that they didn’t have the means to store the excess energy when it wasn’t needed. Renewable energy, which could have powered homes and businesses, went unused simply because there was no way to save it for later. Now, imagine if we could capture that surplus energy and store it for peak times when demand is high. That’s exactly where storage infrastructure comes in.
But, contemporary storage needs are not just about energy. They are much broader. At its core, storage is the act of holding resources, such as energy, water, data, goods, or even carbon, in specific physical spaces until they’re needed, or confining them away from the environment and our society. It’s something humans have done for centuries. Think of ancient grain silos that kept communities fed during harsh winters, or water reservoirs that stored water for use during dry spells. These historical practices laid the foundation for modern storage innovations, but today, new storage methods are taking the practice to another level – with major consequences.
One of these more recent examples comes in the form of energy storage. For instance, Hydrostor, a Toronto-based energy storage company, has proposed an innovative storage project in California. If constructed, the 500 MW Willow Rock Energy Storage Center would use compressed air to store energy underground. A subterranean cavern will act as a battery where air will be pumped using renewable energy when it is plentiful and released to spin turbines and produce electricity on demand.
Despite the importance of resource storage, it has remained a fringe topic in the fields of geography, science and technology studies, and anthropology, where the focus has been on the dynamic of how resources are produced, consumed, and transported. However, a new literature review paper from Sayd Randle, Assistant Professor at Singapore Management University explores how this is changing and why there is an increasing amount of research going into emergent methods of geological storage and new carbon, energy, water, waste, cryogenic, commodity, and data storage methods.
This innovative research centres around the growing literature on the different types of resource storage, the relationship between the stillness of storage and the dynamics of movement in supply chains, the overlap of storage with socio-economic, land use, and environmental issues, and, in the last part of her review, the potential for resource storage in the future to shape issues such as climate change and sustainability.
Sayd’s literature review was inspired by a 2020 article by Daniel Banoub and Sarah Martin’s on grain and saltfish storage in late 19th and early 20th century North America. This important work revealed the importance of resource storage across history in a capitalist system in creating value and its overlap into socio-ecological systems. Sayd’s literature review is based on the grounding of this research.
Outlining the different types of resource storage is an effective place to start, as it helps us understand the potential and realities of what storage is, the differences between each type, and how each can be used. Sayd breaks resource storage into three broad types: stockpiling, warehousing, and containment.
Stockpiling is defined by its temporal features; a stockpile is intended to be used and should be ready to use when the time comes, stockpiling weapons for when war eventually comes or grain for a baron winter, for example. In contrast, warehousing is more about commodity storage and storage for financial gain, a critical aspect of capitalism. While these two storage types focus on the temporal dimensions of resource storage and holding materials until they are needed, the last type of storage, containment, refers to holding an object or resource for an indefinite time, isolating the resource from the environment or indeed, society. Examples of this would be animal agriculture, aquaculture, or even human incarceration.
Storage is a critical part of global supply chains and the movement of resources, or as Sayd terms it, circulation. The concept of storage through history and how it relates to our modern systems of circulation, also known as supply chains and capital, has been analogised to water reservoirs holding goods temporarily to maintain the flow of commodities. This storage model holds things in place and reflects a predictable cycle of keeping things in one place until they are put into motion, similar to how reservoirs sustain water distribution. But, as the literature shows, storage isn’t always stationary. Shipping containers and railcars act as mobile warehouses. These “floating” storage modes blur the line between storage and movement.
Modern logistics rely on carefully planned pauses as essential parts of supply chains. While appearing static, storage facilities like distribution centers and ports are constantly moving, driven by global flows of goods, and creating new opportunities for capital accumulation. As the rise and geographic concentration of such facilities attests, storage is about strategically placing things, and for a reason. For example, oil producers often store oil tankers and keep them in place until market prices increase.
On another level, we see storage in crisis management, from government stockpiles ensuring resource stability, to private individuals preparing for a potential apocalypse or political unrest. Meanwhile, storage-as-disposal, like carbon sequestration or nuclear waste containment, illustrates growing aspirations for storage to remove harmful materials from global systems.
In all these cases, storage clearly influences global supply chains, but also environmental and social systems. It’s a socio-economic strategy that shapes how we manage resources, plan for crises, and sustain capital systems.
Now that we have looked at the types of storage and its relationship to global supply chains and resource movement in general, the final part of Sayd’s literature review considers storage’s relationship with the physical and social environment.
Storage arrangements have a profound impact on landscapes and communities, shaping environments and limiting their potential uses. Reservoirs are a clear example, often flooding land and displacing communities to enable water storage, with consequences extending far beyond just storing water. Similarly, distribution centres and energy storage facilities reshape local environments, strain resources, and disrupt ecosystems. For instance, lithium-ion battery storage sites drive destructive mining operations in many corners of the globe.
Storage sites also face challenges from their permeability. Facilities designed to preserve materials often grapple with unwanted intrusions, like moisture degrading seeds in a grain silo or nuclear waste contaminating local environments. These examples reveal storage as less of a perfect containment and more of an ongoing struggle to manage leakage and the transformation of stored goods. Even “secure” sites require constant labour and infrastructure to maintain functionality.
The human and ecological labour behind storage is critical. From water reservoirs to carbon storage initiatives, maintaining storage systems involves complex, often overlooked work. This includes managing sedimentation, mitigating environmental degradation, and creating public narratives to justify these projects’ evolving purposes. This means that governments and companies across the globe play a key role in maintaining stored resources and their sites.
This is why geopolitics and capitalism play a huge role in storage – while storage shapes both of those systems. Infrastructure often prioritises profit, redistributing resources unequally. For instance, while carbon storage appears eco-friendly, it frequently serves as a tool for extending extractive industries like fossil fuel exploitation. Ultimately, understanding storage means examining its broader socio-political, ecological, and economic effects, raising questions about who benefits and at what cost. Through this lens, storage becomes more than logistics. It’s a key driver in shaping both landscapes and societal systems, and requires watchful and diligent policies, research, and investment to maintain.
As shown by Sayd’s literature review, resource storage has remained largely under-the-radar within academic literature until a recent resurgence has resurfaced its importance in historical capitalist and human systems and its potential future role in addressing contemporary problems like climate change.
The literature review also reveals aspects of resource dynamics often missed, with the academic focus on movement, flows, and circulations, and how storage is a powerful force shaping resource circulation and landscapes alike. Storage arrangements have long been integral to the accumulation of capital and resources. This could continue with novel methods of resource storage, such as renewable energy storage, like the Hydrostor air pressure battery example, or with carbon capture and storage to reduce climate change-causing emissions. Resource storage has huge future potential for profit and purpose.
In closing and looking towards the future, Sayd suggests that new research could dive much deeper into arrangements and dynamics of emerging storage projects. Such work could help us better understand how keeping certain materials stationary creates opportunities for others to move more freely and efficiently. It’s an orientation that could bring more clarity to how we manage resources and energy in a world that’s constantly in motion.
That’s all for this episode, thanks for listening. Links to the original research can be found in the shownotes for this episode. And don’t forget to stay subscribed to ResearchPod for more of the latest science!
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