Understanding And Applying The Precautionary Principle In The Energy Transition

The precautionary principle has been an important aspect of regulatory delivery for nearly four decades. Now widely applied and with a global reach, the principle is often invoked whenever the scientific evidence surrounding the safety of a given technology is not conclusive. It is often applied where a safety risk is known to exist, but the probability and magnitude of harm are uncertain or unknown.

Energy transition is a complex global problem, with governance and policies cutting across multiple legal silos including human rights, environment, international economics, finance, energy, law of the sea, and transnational commerce. As of yet, there is no comprehensive treatment of the legal principles governing energy transition as a whole. Furthermore, energy transition must solve a trilemma that pits energy equity (the need to provide access to energy needed to fuel human development) and energy security (the need to provide resilient and reliable energy systems) against environmental sustainability. Without a comprehensive understanding of these issues, law and policy-makers risk exacerbating rather than resolving the underlying problems. Principles of International Energy Transition Law introduces the energy transition problem by situating the climate emergency in its broader energy and development context, showing how global energy value chains are deeply enmeshed in and drive global economic and human development. It combines the different legal perspectives in one consistent analysis by outlining their interactions and showing how they can be reconciled. The book discusses thirty-two international legal principles governing different aspects of the energy transition trilemma's three parts. It then uses a commons governance perspective to propose a holistic approach to applying and balancing these different parts and their different legal principles. Highlighted sections summarise the most important concepts and ideas for easy reference, making the title particularly accessible for students and policy-makers as well as law practitioners.

Low-emission hydrogen is expected to play an important role in the energy transition to tackle the climate crisis. It can decarbonate “hard-to-abate” sectors still relying on fossil fuels, turn low-carbon electricity into a fuel that can be transported using pipelines and provide a green transport alternative, in particular for heavy-duty and long-distance transport.

The review provides 36 recommendations to help Chile improve its environmental performance, with a special focus on water management and policies. It provides an independent, evidence-based evaluation of the country’s environmental performance since the previous review in 2016.

This challenging book takes a broad and thought-provoking look at the precautionary principle and its implementation, or potential implementation, in a number of fields. In particular, the essays within the book explore the challenges faced by public decision-making processes when applying the precautionary principle, including its role in risk management and risk assessment. Frameworks for improved decision making are considered, followed by a detailed analysis of prospective applications of the precautionary principle in a number of emerging fields including: nanotechnology, climate change.

In The International Seabed Authority and the Precautionary Principle, Aline L. Jaeckel offers an insightful analysis of the work of the International Seabed Authority and examines whether the Authority is implementing the precautionary principle in regulating and managing deep seabed minerals.

This is a ‘Whole Earth Catalog’ for the 21st century: an impressive and wide-ranging analysis of what’s wrong with our societies, organizations, ideologies, worldviews and cultures – and how to put them right. The book covers the finance system, agriculture, design, ecology, economy, sustainability, organizations and society at large.

The precautionary principle is widely seen as fundamental to successful policies for sustainability. It has been cited in international courts and trade disputes between the USA and the EU, and invoked in a growing range of political debates. Understanding what it can and cannot achieve is therefore crucial. This volume looks back over the last century to examine the role the principle played or could have played, in a range of major and avoidable public disasters. From detailed investigation of how each disaster unfolded, what the impacts were and what measures were adopted, the authors draw lessons and establish criteria that could help to minimise the health and environmental risks of future technological, economic and policy innovations. This is an informative resource for all those from lawyers and policy-makers, to researchers and students needing to understand or apply the principle.