Global Energy: Issues, Potentials, and Policy Implications

Energy, and access to energy, are essential to human life, civilisation and development. A number of energy issues - including energy security, energy prices and the polluting emissions for energy use - now have high prominence on global agendas of policy and diplomacy. In addressing these and other global energy issues, the purpose of this book is to lay out the broad global energy landscape, exploring how these issues might develop in coming decades, and the implications of such developments for energy policy. There are great uncertainties, which will be identified, in respect of some of these issues, but many of the defining characteristics of the landscape are clear, and the energy policies of all countries will need to be broadly consistent with these if they are to be feasible and achieve their objectives. The book therefore provides information about and analysis of energy and related resources, and the technologies that have been and are being developed to exploit them that is essential to understanding how the global energy system is developing, and how it might develop in the future. But its main focus is the critical economic, social, political and cultural issues that will determine how energy systems will develop and which technologies are deployed, why, by whom, and who will benefit from them. The book has three Parts. Part I sets out the current global context for energy system developments, outlining the essential trends of global energy supply and demand, and atmospheric emissions, from the past and going forward, and their driving forces. Part II explores the options and choices, covering both energy demand and energy supply, facing national and international policymakers as they confront the challenges of the global context outlined in Part I. Part III of the book brings together the discussion in Parts I and II with consideration of possible global energy and environmental futures, and of the energy policy choices which will determine which future actually comes to pass.

Paul Ekins, Deputy Director, UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) and Director and Professor of Resources and Environmental Policy, UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, University College London,Mike Bradshaw, Professor of Global Energy, Warwick Business School,Jim Watson, Research Director, UK Energy Research Centre

Paul Ekins has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of London and is Professor of Resources and Environmental Policy and Director of the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, University College London. He is also Deputy Director of the UK Energy Research Centre, in charge of its Energy Resources and Vectors theme. He was a Member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution from 2002-2008. Paul Ekins' academic work focuses on the conditions and policies for achieving an environmentally sustainable economy, concerning which he has written numerous books, papers and articles, including Global Warming and Energy Demand (co-Ed., Routledge, 1995), Economic Growth and Environmental Sustainability: the Prospects for Green Growth (Routledge, London, 2000), Carbon-Energy Taxation: Lessons from Europe (co-Ed, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009), and Energy 2050: the Transition to a Secure, Low-Carbon Energy System for the UK (co-Ed, Earthscan, London, 2011).


Mike Bradshaw joined Warwick Business as Professor of Global Energy in January 2014, where he teaches a course on their Global Energy MBA entitled Energy in Global Politics. Prior to that he spent 13 years at the University of Leicester as Professor of Human Geography. He has a PhD in Human Geography from the University of British Columbia, Canada. His research deals with the geopolitical economy of oil and gas, with a particular emphasis on developments in Russia. He has recently completed a project funded by the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) that examined the Geopolitical Economy of Global Gas Security and Governance and its implications for the UK. He is also involved in both UK-based and EU-wide research programmes on the social science aspects of shale gas development. In 2014 Polity Press published his book: Global Energy Dilemmas. He is currently writing a book on the geopolitics of natural gas.


Jim Watson is Research Director of the UK Energy Research Centre and Professor of Energy Policy at the University of Sussex. He was Director of the Sussex Energy Group at Sussex from Dec 2008 to Jan 2013. He has 20 years of research experience on climate change, energy and innovation policies. His recent outputs include a co-edited book: New Challenges in Energy Security: The UK in a multipolar world (Palgrave, 2013). He has advised several UK government departments, and has been a specialist adviser to two House of Commons select committees. He also has extensive international experience, particularly in China. He is a Council Member of the British Institute for Energy Economics, and a member of the advisory boards of several research and policy organisations.