Energy and Ethics

Justice and the Global Energy Challenge

Benjamin K. Sovacool

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137298645
• eBook ISBN: 9781137298669
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Environment & Energy Policy

Benjamin K. Sovacool applies concepts from justice and ethics theory to contemporary energy problems, and illustrates particular solutions to those problems with examples and case studies from around the world.

1

Introduction

Introduction

The forester and philosopher Aldo Leopold once wrote that promoting sustainable development was “a job not of building roads into lovely country, but of building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind.”¹ This book argues that it’s time to build some receptivity into our minds concerning the immorality and injustice of the decisions we each make about energy production and consumption.

Though we may not see it directly, our modern reliance on oil, coal, natural gas, and uranium – the world’s four main sources of modern energy – continues to involve, and at times worsens, gross inequality and inequity, and it presents pressing moral and ethical concerns. One-quarter of humanity lives in homes without reliable and affordable access to heating, lighting, and cooking, and there are more humans living without electricity today than at any other time in human history. Policymakers in Europe and the United States ignore human rights abuses and the treatment of women in major oil-exporting countries to ensure security of supply and low market prices. Farmers and landowners in the rainforests of Asia and Africa degrade their land to provide fuel for cooking and support community incomes, raising standards of living but collapsing habitats and contributing to global greenhouse gas emissions. City and county officials locate trash incinerators, coal mines, and landfills near state borders when possible so that some of their pollution is transferred to other communities, a problem known as “state line syndrome.” The funds from oil extraction and production in Azerbaijan and Nigeria have generated more revenue for presidential palaces, private airplanes, and prostitutes rather than bread, books, and better social services.

Energy, like many other processes and technological systems in society, can be used for good or evil. To those who hope that renewable forms of energy such as solar panels and wind turbines will by themselves emancipate us from a world of oil dependence and climate change, consider that imperialism and colonialism arose during an era of renewable energy and associated technologies, which formed the energy basis of British, French, Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese colonial empires. Wind-powered sailboats conquered the world, windmills ground sugarcane on slave plantations, and water-powered pumps drained lakes while water-powered mills accelerated deforestation.² Without direction concerning what is “moral” and “right,” the utilization of renewable energy fuels and services can dominate and enslave as much as they can democratize and liberate.

These examples raise three key moral questions: (1) Are we being fair to present generations in giving some people disproportionate access to the benefits of energy while giving others its burdens? (2) Are we being fair to future generations in leaving a legacy of nuclear waste, the depletion of fossil fuels, and the pollution of the atmosphere and climate? (3) What do justice and ethics have to contribute to how we all make decisions about energy? This book answers these questions, as well as a few others. It connects concepts from justice theory and ethics to pressing concerns about energy policy, technology, and security. In doing so, it combines the most up-to-date data on global energy security and climate change with appraisals based on centuries of thought about the meaning of justice in social decisions.

Novelty and contribution

In traveling down this ethical road, this book differs from others on energy, the environment, and climate change in four meaningful ways.

First, and most obviously, the book critiques the view that energy policy and security problems are matters best left to economists and engineers. The book resonates strongly with the statement from philosopher and humanist Paul Goodman, who once wrote that “whether or not it draws on new scientific research, technology is a branch of moral philosophy, not of science.”³ The book therefore rejects the idea that the market will “solve” our energy problems and that scientists and engineers can “design” technical solutions without first addressing fundamental moral questions about justice and ethics. Left to their own devices, global energy markets will prolong the use of fossil fuels as long as they are profitable to extract and use, down to the last remaining drops of oil and lumps of coal, even if their combustion and use permanently damages the climate and ruins local communities, or if their benefits seemingly outweigh their costs (even if all of the benefits accrue to one wealthy company and the costs afflict thousands of penniless villagers). Similarly, research scientists and engineers will help them do so as long as they have a vested interest in the energy sector – which hundreds of thousands do.

Influenced by this flawed paradigm obsessing over economics and technology, energy analysts frequently ask the wrong questions. They will ponder how large proven reserves of oil and gas are rather than questioning the need to utilize oil and gas in the first place, or to ask whether these infrastructures are fair to their workers and the communities that live near them. They will assess and model energy prices and technological learning curves rather than ask how existing energy infrastructures benefit some people to the exclusion of others.

On the contrary, this book argues that it is a mistake to talk about building infrastructure, improving energy security, developing energy resources, forecasting future energy demand, or conducting research on new technologies without first asking what this energy is for, what values and moral frameworks ought to guide us, and who benefits. Too often, national and international energy policies have focused on protecting adequate supplies of conventional fuels with little to no regard for the long-term consequences to the people and cultures the policies are intended to benefit. For, as eminent historian David F. Noble writes, without morality “the technological pursuit of salvation can become a threat to our survival.”⁴

Second, because of its focus on justice, the book relies on concepts and sources of data from philosophy, law, and ethics, along with politics, economics, sociology, psychology, and history. In doing so, the book ignores the usual dichotomies in energy scholarship and analysis such as “supply” versus “demand,” “scientific” methods and disciplines versus “social science” ones, and “technology” versus “behavior.”

Third, the book utilizes what geographers and political scientists call a “polycentric” lens that classifies “decision-makers” not only as policymakers and regulators but also as ordinary students, jurists, homeowners, businesspersons, and consumers. The book therefore discusses “top-down” justice solutions such as national legislation and policy mechanisms alongside “bottom-up” elements such as household energy programs and community-based climate change adaptation projects.

Fourth, the book has a comparative, global focus with case studies involving dozens of countries. This is because energy issues are now global in scope. Worldwide trade in oil and gas amounts to roughly $2.2 trillion per year and two-thirds of all oil and gas is traded internationally,⁵ in addition to another $1.3 trillion in annual revenues from the extractive industries sector, to which coal is the largest contributor. Indeed, 37 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions are from fossil fuels traded internationally – that is, they were not consumed in their countries of origin – and an additional 23 percent of global emissions are embodied in traded goods and spread across a supply chain involving at least two or more countries.⁶ The energy industry, its resources and shortages, its people, its prices, and its emissions are interdependent, and this interconnectedness requires that an assessment of energy justice takes a concomitant global focus.

The book is not, however, merely about abstract justice and ethics concepts. It is also about people, and, to some degree, hope. In the pages to come, you will read about how self-organized groups of cooperatives played a strong role in convincing Denmark to switch from centralized power plants to decentralized wind farms, and completely rejected nuclear power in the process. You will read about how thousands of elderly and poor British citizens literally freeze to death in the winter because they cannot afford heat, but also about how a national program has lifted millions of these homes out of fuel poverty. You will read about how an independent yet brave three-person Inspection Panel has stood up to the executive management of the World Bank and persuaded them to abandon or dramatically improve the Bank’s plans for hydroelectric dams, coal mines, road transport systems, and other types of infrastructure. You will read about how countries such as Chad and Nigeria have voluntarily joined a global transparency initiative that explicitly gives civil society groups and communities a platform to raise issues over petroleum revenues. You will read how the small island country of São Tomé e Príncipe has decided to invest all of its revenue from the energy industry into a fund for social development projects and future generations. You will read how a national infrastructure bank has pumped millions of dollars into the dissemination of solar home systems in Bangladesh to the point where more than five million individuals, mostly women and children, have received affordable yet high-quality light for the first time. You will read about how a collection of rich countries such as Germany and the United States have banded together to donate half a billion dollars to least developed countries such as Bhutan and Cambodia so that they can prevent glacial floods and improve their food security in the face of climate change. You will, lastly, read about an ambitious proposal by Ecuador to keep almost one billion barrels of oil in the ground under the Yasuní National Forest so that its precious diversity, and the cultural heritage of the Huaorani, Quechua, Tagaeri, and Taromenane people, is preserved.

But, for those who want to read about more than people and hope, an exploration of energy justice is also about good business, and at making money while doing right. Three of the book’s case studies are examples of how promoting energy justice brings exorbitant social and economic benefits that far outweigh its cost. In the United Kingdom, Chapter Two reveals that £2.4 billion invested to fight energy poverty has yielded £87.2 billion in savings. Chapter Eight demonstrates that the climate change adaptation measures being promoted by the Global Environment Facility have a future return on investment of 40 to 1, cut carbon dioxide emissions 2 to 500 times more cheaply than alternatives, and leverage an additional $4.66 for every $1 funneled into their Least Developed Countries Fund. Chapter Nine showcases how Ecuador’s Yasuní-ITT initiative keeps $7.2 billion worth of oil undeveloped so that $32.8 billion in avoided emissions, preserved forests, and national poverty targets can be achieved.⁷

Furthermore, the book matters not only for purely philosophical reasons, but because justice can directly impact community livelihoods and the bottom line of energy corporations. In the United Kingdom, for example, a saboteur breached the most heavily guarded power station in the country, ruined one of the plant’s 500 MW turbines and left a homemade poster protesting against coal. The incident forced the coal- and oil-fired facility to suspend electricity generation for four hours and caused greenhouse gas emissions over the entire UK to temporarily drop by two percent.⁸ In Australia, dozens of protesters scaled 50-meter walls and chained themselves to the Hay Point Export Terminal near Mackay, forcing its closure for two days, preventing the export of 180,000 tons of coal, and causing $14 million in lost revenues.⁹ In Nepal, Maoist rebels repeatedly bombed and attacked various hydroelectric power stations in an effort to force the government to promote political pluralism and reduce corruption.¹⁰ In the Sao Paulo state of Brazil, 900 women from Via Campesina occupied the Cevasa sugar mill to protest against its labor practices, suspending operations for a week and inducing substantial economic losses.¹¹ In the Port of Hamburg, Germany, the Klimacamp group sent 200 people to blockade the world’s largest refinery for biodiesel operated by Archer Daniels Midland, shutting down the refining of Indonesian palm oil.¹² In the Philippines, Communist New People’s Army rebels raided a state-owned plantation used for the manufacturing of biofuels from jatropha on Negros Island, where they torched equip...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction
• 2  Availability and Danish Energy Policy
• 3  Affordability and Fuel Poverty in England
• 4  Due Process and the World Bank’s Inspection Panel
• 5  Information and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative
• 6  Prudence and São Tomé e Príncipe’s Oil Revenue Management Law
• 7  Intergenerational Equity and Solar Energy in Bangladesh
• 8  Intragenerational Equity and Climate Change Adaptation
• 9  Responsibility and Ecuador’s Yasuní-ITT Initiative
• 10  Conclusion – Conceptualizing Energy Justice
• Notes
• Index