Proedrou - Energy Policy and Security under Climate Change

Cover design: Akihiro Nakayama

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature.

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Humanity finds itself at a critical crossroads . Based on the mainstream scientific consensus, humanity is faced with multiple existential threats. It is reaching critical planetary limits in domains such as global freshwater use and ocean acidification, rate of biodiversity loss, land-system change, stratospheric ozone depletion, and growth across all indices of starving resources (Zimmerer : 1109).

Framing the issue macroscopically, humanity survived due to conducive conditions throughout the Holocene, the geological period dated to 11,000 years ago. We entered the most recent phase, Anthropocene, 250 years ago. Anthropocene is characterized by the reversal of a symbiotic relationship between humans and the ecosystem following the Industrial Revolution, and the end of the slow and peaceful utilization of the latters resources for the formers survival and welfare. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change () has issued five assessment reports, in which significant probability has given way to certainty regarding the anthropogenic nature of climate change.

At inception, climate change was viewed principally as a technical issue assigned to specialized institutions and framed in equally scientific terms. These initial formulations unraveled as the scope of threat presented by climate change came into focus. Given biophysical framings of climate impacts and ecosystems vulnerability, it is now recognized that vulnerability to climate change properly extends to the socioeconomic and political conditions that affect how communities cope with the impacts of climate-related hazards (Mason : 164).

As the initial speculation wanedalong with overt denial and skepticismthe understanding of climate change graduated to widespread acquiescence of the bold fact that the climate has entered a phase of transformation that works to the detriment of human existence. There are three main reasons why this has happened in the course of the last two decades. Firstly, science itself has generated compelling evidence on the validity of the initial hypothesis. Accordingly, the burden of proof has moved to the opposite camp, which has failed to wage a persuasive campaign. Secondly, and related to the above, ecological transformations are producing powerful visible effects of climate change impact, now and into the future. Thirdly, there has been a significantalbeit far from universalshift in entrepreneurial mood and concomitant growing acceptance of economic convergence with climate change. There is ample space for innovation and plenty corporate opportunities in green capitalism, which more and more economic actors are eager to seize upon, especially given tense competition in saturated economic sectors that drives the need for diversification of business portfolios. This economic convergence has facilitated a more favorable understanding of the challenge and enabled responses to it (Beck and Van Loon : 11721).

The main culprit behind climate change has been the extensive use of fossil fuels . Climate change mitigation has hence been cast largely as one of changing the energy systems of contemporary society away from fossil fuel-based systems towards low- or no-carbon systems (Steffen : 193).

Although pressure for more comprehensive climate policy becomes critical for the future of energy globally (Dubash and Florini : 23).

Overall, responses to climate changepractical efforts to bring emissions down to sustainable levelshave been greatly conditioned by mainstream understandings of and workings within the global political economy, the global political system, and domestic political contours. After exploring these interactions in the next three sections, this introductory chapter moves on to expose the prevailing inconsistencies plaguing responses to climate change. The analysis then broaches the implicit trilemma between climate change mitigation, energy security and growth that drives the politics of climate change mitigation. Against this backdrop, the book sets out an alternative model of energy transition that breaks from the growth imperative tied to the traditional prisms of energy security , geopolitics and development .