Below scales of about 100=hMpc our universe displays a complex inhomogeneous structure dominated by voids, with clusters of galaxies in sheets and filaments. The coincidence that cosmic expansion appears to start accelerating at the epoch when such structures form has prompted a number of researchers to question whether dark energy is a signature of a failure of the standard cosmology to properly account, on average, for the distribution of matter we observe. Here I discuss the timescape scenario, in which cosmic acceleration is understood as an apparent effect, due to gravitational energy gradients that grow when spatial curvature gradients become significant with the nonlinear growth of cosmic structure. This affects the calibration of local geometry to the solutions of the volume-average evolution equations corrected by backreaction. I further discuss recent work on defining observational tests for average geometric quantities which can distinguish the timescape model from a cosmological constant or other models of dark energy. Copyright © 2012 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.