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With rangelands being one of the greatest sources for novel scales of energy development, it is clear that actions are needed to understand how energy development alters various economic, cultural and ecological services in these regions. We discuss the disciplinary shift needed from the modern rangeland professional to understand the impacts of energy development in rangelands. This requires moving past traditional utilitarian approaches associated with a solitary ecosystem service, such as livestock production or harvest, and toward an approach that embraces energy development as one of multiple ecosystem services that can be derived from rangeland landscapes. Sustaining multiple services, however, requires management that can effectively assess the tradeoffs of energy on food, fiber, water, disaster avoidance, and biodiversity within a dynamic framework built around concepts of complex adaptive systems.