Energy Security

9 Key excerpts on "Energy Security"

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  Geopolitics of Energy in Central Asia

  India's Position and Policy

  • Ramakrushna Pradhan(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge India

    (Publisher)

  Geopolitics as such straddles two disciplines – Geography and Politics. Therefore, it is defined as the analysis of the interaction between on the one hand geographical settings and perspectives and, on the other political processes. The political processes include forces that operated at the international level and those on the domestic scene that influence international behaviour. Both geographical settings and political processes are dynamic, and each influences and is influenced by the other. Geopolitics addresses the consequences of this interaction as well.

  Energy Security: concept and character

  Energy Security, a term that is mentioned in every policy formulation, both in national and international forums, in contemporary times. But what does it mean? Does it mean national security? Well, sort of. Does it mean energy independence? Well, sort of that too. Does it mean economic security? Yes, all of the above.

  “Energy Security” is probably best understood when taken literally. Energy needs to be secured in terms of the sources, i.e., where it comes from, control of the flow and distribution of that energy, and having alternatives in place to allow the countries of the world to withstand the highs and lows associated with any commodity (EAA 2005: 1).

  Second only to national defence, energy plays a crucial role in the survival and well-being of all countries, both developing and developed. It determines whether our lights will go on or off, our agriculture and industry will go forwards or backwards. The specific policies a country chooses to make up its overall energy policy comprise “a subset of economic policy, foreign policy, and national and international security policy”. These are how the country’s concerns seek to achieve the end or ultimate goal of Energy Security. In its most fundamental sense, therefore, “Energy Security” means having the “assurance of the ability to access the energy resources required for the continued development of national power” (Hill 2003: 132). In more specific terms, it is the provision of affordable, reliable, diverse and ample supplies of oil and gas (and their future equivalents) and adequate infrastructure to deliver these supplies to the market (Kalick and Goldwyn 2005: 9). Energy Security thus became a question of national strategy. As Churchill said, “safety and certainty in oil lie in variety and variety alone” (Yergin 2006: 69). Moreover, it must be recognized that Energy Security does not stand by itself but is lodged in the larger relations among nations and how they interact with one another.

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  European Energy Security

  Turkey's Future Role and Impact

  • M. Biresselioglu(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  24 The term ‘Energy Security’ broadly refers to 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’, as Barton et al. (2005) highlight. The same authors also focus on four different aspects of the ‘Energy Security’ matrix. These are: (1) the security of supply; (2) the security of demand; (3) the reliability of energy supply; (4) the physical security of energy installations and personnel (Barton et al. 2005, 496). However, these aspects stimulate major political and economical challenges in order to establish an adequate ‘Energy Security’, mainly on the supply side. According to Secretary General of the IEF Arne Walther, there is an economic challenge in making the necessary investments for the security of energy supply. He argues that there will be an ‘enormous competition for funds with other sectors of economy’ (Walther 2005) in order to make necessary investments in the energy sector. Another economic challenge is to face the imbalances between energy demand and supply. Although the security of demand is expected to continue to remain stable or even increase, those seeking the security of supply will confront major obstacles. In fact, the political challenges are rather diff- erent to the economic ones. From a political perspective, the question is how the energy-dependent actors could act collectively rather than competitively as in the economic sphere due to ‘potential concern arising from government decisions of producing countries to suspend deliveries because of deliberate policies, war or civil strife, or as a result of failed regulation, which is referred to as a regulatory risk’ (Heisbourg 2006). These major threats could affect all the consumer countries and world Energy Security in a negative way.

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  The Global Energy Challenge

  Environment, Development and Security

  • Caroline Kuzemko, Andreas Goldthau, Michael Keating(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  148 Chapter 7 Energy Security Energy Security is one of the core problems of the contemporary world, and the third of the trilemma of global energy challenges. The importance that states and IGOs place on Energy Security may rise and fall over time, but the recent escalation of interest appears to be on a par with the 1970s, when much of the world was rocked by ‘oil shocks’. As recently observed: Rare is the occasion when a topic is equally fashionable academically and politically. Energy Security is on top of the agenda of states, international organisations and NGOs alike. (Ciuta 2010 ) Consequently, security has become a primary energy policy objective for most countries around the world, as well as a subject of renewed interest for a range of intergovernmental and regional organisations. This chapter presents as rounded a view as possible of Energy Security – what it is, and what is being done to address it as a governance issue around the world. A range of different perspectives that help us to understand and interpret this historically thorny subject are introduced, including (but not limited to) geopolitical perspectives. The chapter begins by looking at different ways in which the concept of Energy Security is understood, including how Energy Security concerns overlap with other non-traditional security issues such as food and water security. The chapter then considers the question of why energy has returned as a security issue, and different views on which particular aspects of energy are causes of security con-cerns. The final section details governance approaches to Energy Security, at the international level, and from the perspective of both importers and exporters. Understanding Energy Security Energy Security has so many different dimensions that it has proven very dif-ficult to define. When people are concerned with Energy Security, it is usually due to the realisation of energy’s fundamental role in contemporary social life.

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  China and India

  The Quest for Energy Resources in the 21st Century

  • Hong Zhao(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  3 Geopolitics of Energy Security DOI: 10.4324/9780203124857-3

  As described in Chapter 2 , China and India are both characterized by high economic growth and big increases in energy consumption. Although both countries are trying hard to find appropriate energy alternatives, increase energy efficiency, and diversify energy resources, they are becoming increasingly dependent on imported oil and gas, and the unstable Middle East and Africa are set to remain their predominant sources of oil and gas. Thus high dependence on fossil fuels poses several security challenges, including a widening gap between supply and demand, the transportation of oil and gas on vulnerable sea routes, and energy-related CO2 emissions. This chapter mainly analyzes these three dimensions in the context of regional and global perspectives.

  3.1 Energy Security in a global market

  3.1.1 Defining Energy Security

  Energy Security, broadly defined, means adequate, affordable and reliable supplies of energy. It matters because energy is essential to economic growth and human development. Yet no energy system can be entirely secure in the short term, because disruptions or shortages can arise unexpectedly, whether through sabotage, political intervention, strikes, technical failure, accidents, or natural disasters. In the longer term, underinvestment in crude oil production, refining or transportation capacity, or other market failures can lead to shortages and consequently unacceptably high prices. So Energy Security, in practice, is best seen as a problem of risk management; i.e. reducing to an acceptable level the risks and consequences of disruptions and adverse long-term market trends.

  Concerns about Energy Security have evolved over time with changes in the global energy system and perception about the risks and potential costs of supply disruptions. In the 1970s and 1980s, the focus was on oil and the dangers associated with over-dependence on oil imports. Today, worries about Energy Security extend to natural gas, which is increasingly traded internationally, and the reliability of electricity supply. Alongside oil and gas, which are carbon-producing fuels, are concerns about climate change. Post-Copenhagen climate change policies are likely to require real changes in emissions in the medium and long term, and require more cooperation from developing countries. If realized, there will be widespread innovation in the energy demand system. It will require different fuels, delivered differently.

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  Energy Security in the Era of Climate Change

  The Asia-Pacific Experience

  • L. Anceschi, J. Symons, L. Anceschi, J. Symons(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Directing our attention instead to the hybrid agencies that assemble heterogeneous ele- ments, hopefully avoids the bias that inevitably results in one-sided research endeavours and destructive or infeasible policy agendas, which have helped to bring about the Anthropocene era in the first place. Assembling Energy Security Energy Security is commonly understood as ‘simply the availability of suffi- cient supplies at affordable prices’, that is, a variable of national economic growth to be secured through markets, political and, if necessary, military action. By extension, political and scholarly concern with Energy Security is premised on threats to the smooth functioning of national economies aris- ing from sharp increases in prices, instability in oil-producing countries or geopolitical tensions. As such, hydrocarbon resources in general, and oil and gas reserves in particular, 8 are deemed the ‘lifeblood of civilization’; for this reason, they are a central preoccupation of national security agendas (Zweig and Bi, 2005; Amineh and Houweling, 2007; Marquina Barrio, 2008; Moran and Russell, 2009). Maximilian Mayer and Peer Schouten 21 While specific national Energy Security strategies may diverge as export and import countries follow diverging interests and strategic policies appear to compete with market-based approaches, their similarities by far outweigh their differences. The basic assumptions have remained constant over time. The standard contemporary understanding of Energy Security has not devi- ated from the canonical definition offered by the US Department of Energy in 1985 (as cited in Hirsch, 1987, p. 1472): Energy Security means that adequate supplies of energy at reasonable cost are physically available to US consumers from both domestic and for- eign sources. It means that the nation is less vulnerable to disruptions in energy supply and that it is better prepared to handle them if they should occur.

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  Energy Transformation towards Sustainability

  • Manuela Tvaronaciene, Beata Slusarczyk(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Elsevier

    (Publisher)

  Researchers and energy policy makers were mostly concerned about the diversification of supply, uninterrupted flow of supply, and affordability of energy. As a result, the concept of security of supply became and still is one of the main definitions of Energy Security. Nowadays Energy Security studies has shifted from a classic approach and become an interdisciplinary field. Climate change, globalization, and uncertain future of fossil fuels have added new dimensions, such as sustainability, energy efficiency, mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, accessibility of energy services (energy poverty), etc. Thus, the concept of Energy Security became interconnected with other environmental, social, political, and security issues. One of the aims at capturing multidimensional essence of Energy Security is international research about differing perceptions of Energy Security (Sovacool et al., 2012). Instead of trying to conceptualize a universal term, it presents 16 distinct dimensions of Energy Security, such as affordable energy services, equitable access to the energy, energy efficiency, etc. The authors broaden the term and include such dimensions as energy education and ensuring transparency in energy projects. Based on these dimensions, they arrange a questionnaire and conduct a survey on people's perception of the Energy Security. The authors argue that this perception differs based on education, age, gender, culture, etc. To go further, Sovacool adds the concept of “cultures” within the energy sector. He argues that different perceptions could be explained by a culture to which a person belongs (Sovacool, 2016). In addition, Sovacool (2016) note that at least five different cultures, such as national, economic, political, professional, and epistemic could exist

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  The Crisis in Energy Policy

  • John M. Deutch(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Harvard University Press

    (Publisher)

  Energy Security refers to the connection between energy mar-kets and national security in production, transmission, and use of energy. The Energy Security landscape has two dimensions: one economic and the other political/military, with a contour that depends upon the particular energy source under consideration. For coal the security challenge is to reduce risk of climate change and control the emissions of CO 2 ; here national economic interests intersect with global geopolitical issues. For nuclear power, the challenge is to reduce the risk of proliferation of nu-clear weapons associated with the nuclear materials in the fuel cycle; here the political/military dimension dominates. For oil and gas the economic Energy Security dimension in-volves the cost of market disruption that accompanies an inter-ruption of supply. The political/military dimension involves the influence of import dependence on the foreign policy of the United States, its allies, and its adversaries. Import payments transfer significant dollars to oil-exporting countries that may not be in sympathy with the values or interests of the United States and its allies. Oil and Gas Import Dependence and Energy Security 1 Import dependence becomes a problem for the public and for political leaders when the amount of the commodity imported is a significant fraction of the total usage and the commodity is 3 Energy Security Energy Security 61 vital to the functioning of an economy, making reliability of supply critical. These conditions are not unique to energy, but the scale and ubiquity of energy attracts the most attention. The principal economic concern is that an abrupt supply interruption is likely to cause a price shock that disrupts the economy. A price shock occurs because users of energy bid up the price of available supply since they cannot quickly adjust to using less energy or switch to other fuels.

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  Understanding Security

  • Mike Bourne(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  278 Understanding Security From resources to radical ecology If security is taken to mean the sustainability of current ways of life, existing geopolitical and economic power distributions and patterns of consumption, then environmental change and resource distribution may have far-reaching implications. If, conversely, the environment is the referent object of security, then contemporary ways of life, consumption and power are revealed to have negative effects on resources, such as the environmental effects of oil produc-tion and the effects of industrial emissions on local and regional environ-ments. Further, the use of military force in pursuit of security aims often has negative environmental impacts, from the anticipated ‘nuclear winter’ that could have taken hold after nuclear war to the more fully realized effects of nuclear testing or the use of depleted uranium munitions and the effects of anti-crop warfare or airborne drug crop eradication efforts. For some more radical perspectives, environmental security requires a shift in the referent object of security, towards the security of the biosphere. These ‘ecological’ perspectives understand security in different ways, which may offer some prospects for tackling environmental issues without falling into the state-centric, short-term, problem-solving orientation of securitization. This rests on a significant shift in the ontological foundations of theorizing security (see Chapter 1). Most Western political theory is ‘anthropocentric’ in its ontology; that is, it sees politics and action as deriving from and among human beings and collec-tives. It gives no importance to environmental issues or other material things, other than viewing them as a resource within human relations. This rests on a separation of human and nature (or human and technology), and views much of human history as a story of the progressive domination of nature by man.

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  The Origins of the Syrian Conflict

  Climate Change and Human Security

  • Marwa Daoudy(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Environmental or ecological security, in this definition, is the means and processes that seek to reduce or prevent environmental consequences of war, natural disasters, erosion of the earth’s carrying capacity, and war and armed conflict resulting from environmental change (Dalby, 2009: 132). Environmental secur- ity, then, represents a critical move in new security, one that attempts to remove hegemonic political domination from the equation by dis- cussing security at its simplest: the desire to prolong and improve life on the planet. Predictably, however, these moves toward a new security conceptu- alization were not welcomed by traditionalists such as Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, who stood by traditional and neoconservative concepts of security and state (Hough, 2014: 23). Indeed, for tradition- alist security scholars such as Andrew Baldwin, these expansions of the concept of security carried the risk of voiding the concept of any meaning (Baldwin et al., 2014). The existence of this reluctance, how- ever, seems to be evidence in and of itself of the fundamental 28 The Context: History, Geography, Security narrowness of the field. The inclusion of environmental concerns in traditional security discourses has forced academics, analysts, and practitioners to broaden not only the consideration of potential threats but also, significantly, the consideration of who or what is being threatened. These conversations widened the lens of security issues by discussing and analyzing the process of securitization, which in turn moved the security literature in a critical and much needed direction. Securitization and the Politics of Fear Securitization theory extends the new examinations of threats and security. Threats are at the foundation of security; when particular issues appear to threaten lives, political responses necessarily follow (Hough, 2014: 9).

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