Disposable Ordos: The making of an energy resource frontier in western China

China's economic growth in recent decades has been accompanied by vigorous growth in energy production and consumption. This article analyzes geographical shifts in the production of energy resources using a relational frontier concept. The frontier concept is deployed to examine the forces driving energy resource production to territories in China's west. Throtigh an understanding of frontiers as peculiar places shaped by flows of capital and contingent socio-economic conditions, this study underscores the both the contributions of national-level energy policy and local political-economy in bringing about a pronounced shift in the distribution of energy resource supply whereby the country's west is increasingly recast as a production zone for energy and the east as a consumption zone. A case study of coal production in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region's Ordos Municipality in the 2000s details the unfolding of frontier processes for this key energy resource. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.