The Global Energy Challenge: Environment, Development and Security

The supply and demand of energy, its security and environmental sustainability are increasingly central and challenging issues in the contemporary world. The need to connect hundreds of millions of homes around the world to electricity is, for example, counter-balanced by the need to mitigate for climate change and to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. This broad-banging text provides a genuinely international and interdisciplinary introduction to today's energy challenges - political, economic, security, policy and technological - set in a clear historical context. The book is explicitly global in approach, not only because of the central role of international institutions and world markets in addressing energy issues, but also because national energy policy and domestic energy politics are themselves internationalised. The book's triple focus on environment, development and security reflects the emerging synergies between these three areas in the practice of energy-governance institutions and draws on insights from across the social sciences. Rather than relying on any one framework or approach, the authors set out a diversity of analytical, frameworks, explaining their relative strengths and weaknesses and demonstrating how an appreciation of the variety can lead to a fuller understanding of the subject matter. Written in a clear and direct style, and assuming no prior knowledge, this book will aid readers in their understanding of global energy politics and policies, as well as giving them insight into the potential future conflicts and the innovations and reforms needed to meet the threefold energy challenge. Book jacket.