The Routledge Handbook of Energy Security

Benjamin K. Sovacool

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780415591171
• eBook ISBN: 9781136850622
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Energy Industry
• Index: Business

This Handbook examines the subject of energy security: its definition, dimensions, ways to measure and index it, and the complicating factors that are often overlooked.

The volume identifies varying definitions and dimensions of energy security, including those that prioritize security of supply and affordability alongside those that emphasize availability, energy efficiency, trade, environmental quality, and social and political stewardship. It also explores the various metrics that can be used to give energy security more coherence, and also to enable it to be measured, including recent attempts to measure energy security progress at the national level, with a special emphasis placed on countries within the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), countries within Asia, and industrialized countries worldwide.

This Handbook:

• Broadens existing discussions of energy security that center on access to fuels, including "oil security" and "coal security."

• Focuses not only on the supply side of energy but also the demand, taking a hard look at energy services and politics along with technologies and infrastructure;

• Investigates energy security issues such as energy poverty, equity and access, and development;

• Analyzes ways to index and measure energy security progress at the national and international level.

This book will be of much interest to students of energy security, energy policy, economics, environmental studies, and IR/Security Studies in general.

1
ENERGY SECURITY AND CLIMATE CHANGE
A tenuous link

Gal Luft, Anne Korin, and Eshita Gupta

Rising concern by many around the world about global warming has brought with it attempts to broaden the definition of energy security and use security/energy security arguments as yet another tool to advance economic policies aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions. The terms climate change and security/energy security are being increasingly tied together and discussed in similar contexts, creating the impression that there is a direct and inextricable link between the two. Furthermore, this alleged linkage suggests that climate policy and energy security share a common solution: moving to a low carbon economy. This linkage has become an article of faith among government officials, pundits, and academics creating fertile ground for a new school of thought within the energy security community, one which promotes a broader definition of energy security. Those who view climate change as a global security threat of equal urgency to the current energy security challenge demand that the potential national security consequences of climate change be fully integrated into national security and energy security strategies, and that energy security solutions should only be applied if they also address climate change concerns.

As we will argue in this chapter, the link between climate security and energy security is more tenuous than one may think. Energy security and greenhouse gas reduction have many complementarities, but there are also many trade-offs between them, and contrary to popular belief, it is not self-evident that climate change will necessarily lead to energy insecurity, or vice versa. It is also incorrect to contend that we may be able to achieve both reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and improvement in energy security with one strike. In fact, too much emphasis on one could compromise the other.

The first section of this chapter attempts to encompass what energy security is, making the case that while consumers, producers, and transit states might have a different outlook on energy security, they all conform to the purist definition of energy security, the one that emphasizes availability and affordability of fossil fuels, which are currently the primary sources of energy used throughout the world. The second section is about what energy security is not. We argue that factoring climate change into the energy security debate is based on flawed logic, selective information, and weak conjunctions. We will show that those who try to make the linkage between energy security and climate change deliberately highlight the potential negative impact of climate change on energy security while failing to account for the potential positive impact. They also ignore the negative impact climate policy might have on energy security in some parts of the world. Worst of all, they repeatedly and manipulatively masquerade climate change solutions as energy security ones.

The purist approach to energy security

After decades in which researchers and politicians have limited the concept of energy security to consuming countries, it is broadly accepted today that energy security is a primary concern to every country regardless of whether it is a producer, consumer, or transit state. It is also commonly accepted that there is no uniform definition of energy security as this concept means different things to different nations based on their state of development, geographical location, their natural endowments, political system, and international relations.¹ While energy importers want security of supply and low prices, energy exporters seek security of demand—the assurance that their production will be purchased at what it considers to be a fair price over the long term—so that national budgets can anticipate a steady and predictable revenue flow. It is also worth remembering that many of the energy exporting nations also face domestic supply problems of their own driven by economic expansion, high population growth, and extremely large subsidies of electricity and transportation fuel prices. Hence, a country’s definition of energy security has much to do with its own particular energy situation and how it views its vulnerability to energy supply disruptions.

In this, it is important to realize that there are two primary energy usage sectors which pose two different types of energy security challenges. The first sector is electricity. Throughout the world today electricity is generated from coal (43 percent), natural gas (20 percent), renewables like hydroelectric, biomass, solar, wind, and geothermal power (19 percent), and nuclear power (13 percent). Contrary to popular belief, in most countries electricity is essentially no longer produced from oil. Only 5 percent of world electricity is generated from petroleum.² This diversity of sources does not exist in the second major sector of energy use—transportation. Transportation energy makes the world go around. It fuels the flow of individuals goods and services on board cars, trucks, ships, airplanes, and many trains. Here oil is king, accounting for over 95 percent of the energy used. In fact, the vast majority of the cars sold around the world today cannot even run on something other than petroleum fuel, be it in the form of gasoline or diesel.

The distinction between electricity and transportation energy shapes countries’ perception of energy security. Some countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia are almost fully self-sufficient with respect to energy, relying on their vast domestic resources of oil and natural gas and, in the case of Russia, coal, for both their power and transportation sectors. Others, like the US and France—the former thanks to its massive coal reserves and the latter due to an expanded nuclear power industry— are almost self-sufficient when it comes to their electricity supply but are heavily dependent on foreign oil imports to fuel their transportation sector. And then there are the most vulnerable countries, which are dependent on imports both of electricity sources like coal and natural gas as well as oil for their transportation needs. In the worst position are those members of the last group that are not only completely dependent on foreign energy but whose energy supply lines are facing constant threat of cut-off.

What shapes countries’ perceptions of energy security is how they view their vulnerabilities. Europeans and Americans are similarly dependent on imported oil, but Europeans’ thinking on energy security is mainly influenced by their dependence on Russian natural gas. Americans are almost self sufficient when it comes to their electricity generation but their way of life depends on private automobiles and cheap fuel. Therefore while Europeans think about gas, Americans are primarily concerned about gasoline.

Despite the variations in countries’ perceptions of energy security, most governments, when pressed to point out what energy security means to them, tend to view the concept as a “reliable and adequate supply of energy at reasonable prices” or as Barry Barton et al. defined energy security: “a condition in which a nation and all, or most, of its citizens and businesses have access to sufficient energy resources at reasonable prices for the foreseeable future free from serious risk of major disruption of service.”³ The term “sufficient energy resources” is clear. But what are “reasonable prices”? What seems to be reasonable to producers may be unreasonable to consumers. What may be reasonable to the rich may be unreasonable to the poor.

This brings us to the often neglected link between poverty and energy security. While large numbers of people in both developed and developing countries today enjoy modern forms of energy, there are still about 2.5 billion people who continue to rely heavily on traditional cooking fuels such as dung and wood, and about 1.6 billion people who have no access to electricity. Most of these people reside in remote rural areas, have low incomes, and are largely dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods. India, home to more than a quarter of the world’s poor, alone accounts for approximately 50 percent of people with high dependence on traditional cooking fuels and 31 percent of those without access to electricity. Enabling the poor to escape the “energy poverty trap” is a primary objective of energy policy decisions in these countries.⁴ While in relatively more developed parts of the world energy security is more about reliability of energy supply, for the poor, energy security means ensuring affordable primary energy access to meet basic consumption and production needs like clean drinking water, cooking, lighting, irrigation, and public transportation.

In sum, where countries stand on energy security depends on where they sit. Perceptions of energy security include considerations varying from availability of supply of energy at an affordable price to improving access of the poor to modern energy resources, to activities that allow countries to produce and use energy at reasonable cost—diversification of energy sources, reducing risk of energy supply disruption by reducing dependence on imported energy supplies, maintaining the physical security of energy sea lanes and pipelines, keeping spare capacity and emergency stocks, enhancing efficiency, and conservation measures. With such a spectrum of issues to consider, burdening discussion with an additional layer of constraints such as climate would only cause sluggishness, if not total paralysis, in energy security decision-making.

The climate-inclusive approach to energy security

The “holistic” approach to energy security is based on the following narrative: humanity’s growing use of energy generated from fossil fuels causes global warming. This rise in global temperatures causes an array of erratic weather conditions like rise in sea level, droughts, floods, and violent storms that, in turn, breed security problems from migration to border disputes to ethnic violence and wars. According to one report, “climate change is a threat multiplier [which] has the potential to cause multiple chronic, destabilizing conditions to occur globally.”⁵ According to this view, climate change should therefore be recognized as an international security problem. To highlight the causality between global warming and security, climate advocates have recruited military brass and senior defense officials. This helped generate momentum to include discussion of national security threats posed by climate change in many nations’ military and national security assessments. In the US, the Congress ordered the National Intelligence Council, which produces government-wide intelligence analyses, to include in its 2008 report the first assessment of the national security implications of climate change.⁶ Intelligence agencies were tasked with preparing a series of reports on the issue. The Pentagon was instructed by Congress to include a climate section in the Quadrennial Defense Review, and the State Department addressed the issue in its Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review. This politically ordered embrace of climate change by the defense and diplomatic communities has, in turn, given fodder and cover to lawmakers working to make the national security argument for approving climate change legislation.

The holistic narrative goes further to suggest that climate change is not only a threat to global security but also a threat multiplier in terms of energy security. The rationale: “Mass migration of refugees seeking asylum from ecological disasters could destabilize regions of the world, threatening energy as well as national security.”⁷ Similar arguments are applied to other environmental phenomena like air pollution, water pollution, land pollution, forestry, and diversity loss. Therefore, according to this argument, climate change solutions should become part and parcel of any reasonable national and international energy security strategy.

Holes in holisticism

The notion that climate change is a driver behind some global security problems is valid and can be easily supported. Indeed, any change in climatic conditions would have some impact on some humans in some parts of the planet. But from here to assume that climate change has an overarching negative impact on energy security requires a leap of logic that must be carefully scrutinized. If a certain variable impacts security this does not necessarily mean that it also impacts energy security. Take religion for example. Since the dawn of history religion has been a driver of conflicts and ethnic strife around the world. Indeed, religion impacts global security. But does that make religion a threat to energy security? If one judges this based on the purist definition of energy security, religion can only be relevant to the energy security debate if it affects energy supply or a nation’s ability to access energy. If religious strife occurring in an energy-producing region actually caused supply disruption, or if one can prove that an attack against an energy facility was religiously motivated, then religion would indeed have a first-order impact on energy security. If, however, religion only happened to contribute to a challenging security environment, causing problems like forced migration, and as a result some of the migrants suffered from lack of access to energy, then that would be a second-order effect.

Hence, assessing the influence of climate change (or religion for that matter) on energy security should be done through one prism: does climate affect the supply, demand, affordability, or reliability of energy supply? If so, is the effect one of first or second order?

For example, if global warming thaws the permafrost in northern Russia, causing damage to oil and gas pipelines and other energy infrastructure, this is a first-order effect. So also is the case if global warming dries rivers that communities rely upon for hydroelectric power. In both cases it is demonstrable that environmental changes adversely impact energy supply. But if a global warming-induced drought forced people to migrate, infringing on other people’s territory, and resulting in a tribal war, that would not be considered as a first-order effect on energy security, even if, among the other hardships suffered by those people (disease, starvation, etc.), there was also shortage of energy.

The danger of including second-order effects of climate change (or any other driver for that matter) in energy security analysis is that such methodology opens the floodgate to multiple second-order effects caused by each and every transnational phenomenon from illegal immigration to organized crime. Such a broad canvas would add hundreds of new variables to the energy security analysis, complicating international dialogue on energy security and making policies designed to enhance energy security much more difficult to agree upon and implement. Say that a suggested path of a pipeline project that would greatly contribute to energy security of country X happens to run through a forest area and thousands of trees soaking up carbon dioxide would have to be cut down in order to complete its construction, hence contributing to global greenhouse gas emissions. Under the climate-inclusive approach to energy security (which generally assumes that climate change hinders energy security) the energy security value of the pipeline project would, by definition, be diminished. Including climate change considerations would therefore serve to cloud rather than illuminate the trade-offs inherent in building the pipeline. By redefining the term energy security, reducing the perceived energy security value of such a pipeline, the terminology would serve as an Orwellian obstacle to a decision to build the pipeline for its energy security benefits despite its environmental impact.

Failure to account for positives

Supporters of the climate-inclusive approach to energy security operate under the assumption that climate change impedes energy security. Based on this assumption, policies that combat climate change would surely bolster energy security. But how certain are we that the warming of the planet threatens global energy security? Could it be the exact opposite? Unfortunately, thus far research on the topic has presented only a partial picture, omitting the positive impact climate change has on energy security. This tendency to count the “losers” and leave out the “...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Introduction: Defining, measuring, and exploring energy security
• 1 Energy security and climate change: A tenuous link
• 2 The fuzzy nature of energy security
• 3 Evaluating the energy security impacts of energy policies
• 4 The sustainable development dimension of energy security
• 5 The maritime dimension of energy security
• 6 The public policy dimension of energy security
• 7 The diversification dimension of energy security
• 8 The environmental dimension of energy security
• 9 The energy poverty dimension of energy security
• 10 The social development dimension of energy security
• 11 The energy efficiency dimension of energy security
• 12 The energy services dimension of energy security
• 13 The industrial dimension of energy security
• 14 The competing dimensions of energy security
• 15 Indicators for energy security
• 16 Measuring security of energy supply with two diversity indexes
• 17 Measuring energy security: From universal indicators to contextualized frameworks
• 18 Applying the four ‘A’s of energy security as criteria in an energy security ranking method
• 19 Measuring energy security performance in the OECD
• 20 Measuring energy security vulnerability
• Conclusion: Exploring the contested and convergent nature of energy security
• Index