ENERGY SECURITY: Economics, Politics, Strategies, and Implications
CARLOS PASCUAL and JONATHAN ELKIND
[BOOKS] Energy is at the heart of economic development in every country. It moves us and powers our factories, government and office buildings, schools, and hospitals. It heats homes and keeps perishable foods cold. Its centrality explains its complexity. Energy is the source of wealth and competition, the basis of political controversy and technological innovation, and the core of an epochal challenge to our global environment. This book presents a collection of chapters on the theme of energy security. In this volume, the contributors seek to promote thoughtful analysis and healthy debate about different aspects of energy security through examination of the major factors currently driving energy policy decisions, including the actions of other nations, a changing climate, and the quest for energy independence. There is no unanimity here no orthodoxy. Instead there are insights into different aspects of energy security and its relationship to the geopolitical, national, and environmental questions of our day.
The United States has been debating energy security since the oil crises of the 1970s, and indeed many of the solutions proposed during the most recent spike of oil prices could be mistaken for the solutions touted from previous decades—such as support for increasing the domestic supply of oil. But we are no longer in the 1970s; the world stage and the global energy landscape have both changed dramatically. Projected growth in the demand for energy from non-OECD countries such as China and India will exceed demand growth in the industrialized world. Economies are more integrally linked through globalization; thus we are more dependent on global trading partners for continued development. And the human race now confronts one of its greatest challenges—halting the threat of global climate change that results largely from the burning of fossil fuels.
Defining “Energy Security”
Running throughout this volume is the question of the proper definition of the term “energy security.” This is no simple issue. The notion of energy security hinges on perspective: the temporal choices that we make and
the way that we balance economic, national security, and environmental concerns. If energy security has ceased to be defined by the simple terms of affordability and dependable supply, what then do we mean when we refer to “energy security” today?
For some leaders and writers in the United States, energy security has come to be synonymous with “energy independence”; the two terms are now being used almost interchangeably in the political discourse. This view finds little support in the chapters that follow. On the contrary, our contributors question the wisdom—and even the practicability—of this goal. They subscribe to the view that our energy security will, for several coming decades, depend profoundly on petroleum and thus on secure international trade in energy.
One of the central points implied in the chapters that follow is the question of how we manage the transition from today’s energy economy to the new, low-carbon energy economy that must be our future. In the short term, that implies the need to sustain, and indeed expand, existing relationships with our chief energy suppliers. At the same time, we must dramatically accelerate progress toward the technologies and trading patterns that we will need to meet our long-term goals of a significantly decarbonized energy market by 2050 or thereabouts. Several of the chapters present ideas for how best to execute this necessarily bifurcated strategy. The chapters are divided by subject into three parts, detailed below: “Geopolitics,” “Understanding Energy Interdependence,” and “Climate Change.” [DOWNLOAD COMPLETE]
