The Political Economy Of Renewable Energy And Energy Security

Bringing together renewable energy and energy security, this book covers both the politics and political economy of renewables and energy security and analyzes renewable technologies in diverse and highly topical countries: Japan, China and Northern Europe.

A volume on the political economy of clean energy transition in developed and developing regions, with a focus on the issues that different countries face as they transition from fossil fuels to lower carbon technologies.

Renewable energy is rising within an energy system dominated by powerful vested energy interests in fossil fuels, nuclear and electric utilities. Analyzing renewables in six very different countries, the author argues that it is the extent to which states have controlled these vested interests that determines the success or failure of renewables.

Renewables are a game changer for interstate energy relations. Their abundance and intermittency, possibilities for decentral generation and use of rare earth materials, and generally electric nature of transportation make them very different from fossil fuels. What do these geographic and technical characteristics of renewable energy systems imply for infrastructure topology and operations, business models, and energy markets? What are the consequences for the strategic realities and policy considerations of producer, consumer, and transit countries and energy-related patterns of cooperation and conflict between them? Who are the winners and losers? The Geopolitics of Renewables is the first in-depth exploration of the implications for interstate energy relations of a transition towards renewable energy. Fifteen international scholars combine insights from several disciplines - international relations, geopolitics, energy security, renewable energy technology, economics, sustainability transitions, and energy policy - to establish a comprehensive overview and understanding of the emerging energy game. Focus is on contemporary developments and how they may shape the coming decades on three levels of analysis: · The emerging global energy game; winners and losers · Regional and bilateral energy relations of established and rising powers · Infrastructure developments and governance responses The book is recommended for academics and policy makers. It offers a novel analytical framework that moves from geography and technology to economics and politics to investigate the geopolitical implications of renewable energy and provides practical illustrations and policy recommendations related to specific countries and regions such as the US, EU, China, India, OPEC, and Russia

This Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of the latest research from leading scholars on the international political economy of energy and resources. Highlighting the important conceptual and empirical themes, the chapters study all levels of governance, from global to local, and explore the wide range of issues emerging in a changing political and economic environment.

The aim of this collective volume is to study the crucial aspects related to the interconnection between the political economy of energy security and national security, which is of great importance globally, due to great volatility and complexity.Several conceptual frameworks regarding the issue of energy security are examined in order to understand the relationships between relevant parameters and then to investigate their implications for national security. Research needs to examine how energy security affects national security of nation states around the world, either as producers or consumers of energy resources.In this volume, the theory of realism is employed for the analysis of such concepts, as it emphasizes the primary importance of any given state and its national security, whereas realism is essentially a political ideology and looks to provide the proper spectrum for further analysis.The fact that the political economy of energy security and the political economy of national security are addressed as separate parts in the literature are among the main drawbacks in our effort to comprehend the issues concerned. The abovementioned results to a dichotomy that affects the ontological and epistemological essence of the two pillars of the issue in question based on our working hypothesis should be addressed in a complementary and interconnected way. Addressing both theoretical concepts and case studies to validate the argument, the authors believe that the academic level of the proposed subject is related to graduate and postgraduate studies.

Mitchell analyses the extent to which the current political paradigm is capable of meeting the challenges of climate change. She argues that unless there are fundamental changes to policy-making, it is unlikely that energy policies will be able to deliver sufficient change to enable a move to a sustainable energy economy.

This Handbook is the first volume to analyse the International Political Economy, the who-gets-what-when-and-how, of global energy. Divided into five sections, it features 28 contributions that deal with energy institutions, trade, transitions, conflict and justice. The chapters span a wide range of energy technologies and markets - including oil and gas, biofuels, carbon capture and storage, nuclear, and electricity - and it cuts across the domestic-international divide. Long-standing issues in the IPE of energy such as the role of OPEC and the ‘resource curse’ are combined with emerging issues such as fossil fuel subsidies and carbon markets. IPE perspectives are interwoven with insights from studies on governance, transitions, security, and political ecology. The Handbook serves as a potent reminder that energy systems are as inherently political and economic as they are technical or technological, and demonstrates that the field of IPE has much to offer to studies of the changing world of energy.