Thomas has developed a number of lines of research that connect under a central concern with the relationship between the concept of energy, conservation, and political economy. Overall, this work addresses “the planetary,” the “environment,” and the “region” as nested entities. Together, these sub-projects contribute to a wider project: "The Planetary Engine."
The first branch of this work concerns the history of energy resource conservation, as both an applied science and policy, since the formalization of the laws of thermodynamics in the mid-nineteenth century. At the center of this work is a sequence of events termed ‘energy crises’ in the 1970s, and the development of a counter-crisis science of energy resource conservation that drew on systems theory, cybernetics, physics, econometrics, forecasting, and computer simulation. Building on his doctoral work, this research is being turned into a monograph, Islands of Order.
Alongside energy history, Thomas’s project is concerned with energy historiography. Drawing on the history of science, technology, and the environment, biobibliography, this project aims to develop an intellectually credible approach to studying energy as an aspect of history, navigating between the twin poles of over and under determination of its agency. In doing so, large parts of this project have addressed the recent emergence of neo-energy determinist thought and its relationship to cultural racism and anti-immigration politics.
The ultimate scale of concern of these sub-projects is the planetary. In Earthing Planetary Models, this work feeds into a critical approach to the growing authority of computational Earth Systems Science (ESS). Working alongside Adam Wickberg (KTH Stockholm) since 2023, this project attempts to historicize the methods, media, and knowledge which ESS, the science of planetary modelling, work with. Historicization is intended to bring the science back down to Earth. Critical analysis of the political economy of ESS reveals an increasingly corporation-aligned science. Examining its political ecology also reveals stark environmental costs. Moreover, the work is now exploring the possibility of a more radical ESS.