We consider the
$s$ -energy
$E({{Z}_{n}};\,s)={{\Sigma }_{i\ne j}}K(\parallel {{z}_{i,n}}\,-\,{{z}_{j,n}}\parallel \,;\,s)$ for point sets
$Zn\,=\,\{{{z}_{k,n}}\,:\,k\,=\,0,\,\ldots \,,\,n\} $ on certain compact sets
$\Gamma $ in
${{\mathbb{R}}^{d}}$ having finite one-dimensional Hausdorff measure,where
$$K(t;\,s)\,=\,\left\{ _{-\ln \,t,\,\,\,\text{if}\,s\,=\,0,\,}^{{{t}^{-s}},\,\,\,\,\,\,\,\text{if}\,s\,>\,0,} \right\}$$
is the Riesz kernel. Asymptotics for the minimum
$s$ -energy and the distribution of minimizing sequences of points is studied. In particular, we prove that, for
$s\,\ge \,1$ , the minimizing nodes for a rectifiable Jordan curve Γ distribute asymptotically uniformly with respect to arclength as
$n\,\to \,\infty $ .