The International Energy Agency (IEA) has recently published a MOdel of Short-term Energy Security (MOSES) developed by Jessica Jewell. MOSES adopts a novel systemic view of energy security where risks and vulnerabilities affect and shape each other. It uses some 30 quantitative indicators to describe different configurations of risk factors and resilience capacities. In line with IEA’s “comprehensive approach to energy security”, MOSES focuses on diverse fuels and carriers and can in future be extended to electricity and energy end-uses. By grouping countries with similar “energy security profiles”, MOSES depicts the energy security landscape for a region or a group of countries. MOSES can be used to identify energy security policy priorities, as a starting point for national energy security assessments, and to track the evolution of a country’s energy security profile or the global energy security situation overtime.
March 13, 2012
January 24, 2012
Does energy security include affordability?
Does energy security have the ‘affordability dimension? On the one hand, energy security policy rhetoric often mentions ‘reasonable’, ‘competitive’, ‘secure’ or ‘affordable’ prices. On the other hand, most of the concrete energy security policy measures such as energy taxes or promoting more expensive renewable energy sources lead to higher rather than lower energy prices. How can this paradox be explained? Does energy security really have an economic dimension? If so, is it about ‘affordable’ prices? Our analysis, summarized below, shows that it is competitive and stable rather than affordable prices that are the focus of real-life energy security policies in Europe. (more…)
November 27, 2011
Three perspectives on energy security
This is the abstract of our article “The three perspectives on energy security: intellectual history, disciplinary roots and the potential for integration” recently published in the Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability
Scholarly discourses on energy security have developed in response to initially separate policy agendas such as supply of fuels for armies and transportation, uninterrupted provision of electricity, and ensuring market and investment effectiveness. As a result three distinct perspectives on energy security have emerged: the ‘sovereignty’ perspective with its roots in political science; the ‘robustness’ perspective with its roots in natural science and engineering; and the ‘resilience’ perspective with its roots in economics and complex systems analysis. At present, the energy security challenges are increasingly entangled so that they cannot be analyzed within the boundaries of any single perspective. To respond to these challenges, the energy security studies should not only achieve mastery of the disciplinary knowledge underlying all three perspectives but also weave the theories, methods and knowledge from these different mindsets together in a unified interdisciplinary effort. The key challenges for interdisciplinary energy security studies are drawing the credible boundaries of the field, formulating credible research questions and developing a methodological toolkit acceptable for all three perspectives.
November 13, 2011
Special issue on energy: Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability
I have recently c0-guest-edited a special issue on energy of the Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, an Elsevier journal. I worked with papers dealing with energy security whereas the other guest editor, Shonali Pachauri from the IIASA focused on energy access. I and Shonali have written an overview considering the relationship between energy security and energy access. The issue includes a conceptual article on the three perspective on energy security which I co-authored with Jessica Jewell.
April 13, 2011
Costs of nuclear accidents (minus the radiation)
The March 31st issue of The Economist published our letter responding to their earlier coverage of the Fukushima disaster. We argued that in calculating the costs of nuclear accidents one needs to look at social and economic costs, not only direct biomedical impacts of radiation. The recent report from the Belarus Emergency Ministry supports this point. Their estimate of the damage to Belarus economy from Chernobyl disaster over 1986-2015 is staggering $235 bln. Over 80% of this figure are direct expenses, i.e. subsidies, payments and protection measures. The rest is indirect damage due to loss of land, forest, minerals and production decline. Belarus annual GDP in current US dollars changed from ca $18 bln in 1990 to just over $10 bln in 2000 to about $50 bln in 2009. Thus the Chernobyl damage can be anything between 4 and 20 GDPs over 30 years. It is quite remarkable that Belarus is still planning to build a nuclear power plant with the costs ranging between $ 5-10 bln. On the other hand may be this figure looks small compared to the Chernobyl-related expenses.
Below is the text of our letter to the Economist: (more…)
March 12, 2011
Three perspectives on energy security: a research agenda
In an entry almost a year ago we identified three ‘mindsets’ of energy security: robustness (we called it “deterministic”), sovereignty, and resilience. The idea of the three mindsets – or three perspectives, as we started to call them later – has been very useful in various energy security studies, not least the Global Energy Assessment. The question, however, still remains: why mindsets? why three of them? At the end of the day, experts and academics cut the energy security “cake” in million different ways coming out with numerous classifications of concerns and resilience factors. How are the three perspectives different and why are they useful? (more…)
June 4, 2010
Four lessons for global energy governance
We have recently submitted an article on global energy governance to Global Policy. In contrast to the frequently asked question “who should govern energy?” we asked the question “what (and how) should be governed?”. Thus, we looked at the global energy governance not as a set of individual institutions and organizations addressing seemingly disconnected energy problems but rather as complex arenas dynamically co-evolving with energy issues. We used ideas from the literature on governance for complexity, energy transitions, global governance and energy security. The following are four policy lessons from the article:
- The scale and urgency of energy challenges require global energy governance able to facilitate systemic energy transitions across technologies, sectors, spatial scales and time horizons.
- Such governance implies globally shared energy goals backed by strong commitment and efficient enforcement as well as learning and flexibility to address complexities and uncertainties of energy systems.
- No single agency or regime will be able to balance these conflicting requirements. Instead, we need a polycentric governance system with its various parts fostering complementary system functions.
- Progressing towards such a system requires strengthening links between the global energy governance arenas — currently focused on energy security, energy access, and climate change — so that they can learn from and eventually complement each other.
We plan to post more detailed summary on this blog.
April 17, 2010
Nuclear energy, enriched uranium and nuclear weapons
In a recent interview, Belarus’ President stated that it was “a huge mistake” to give up the nuclear weapons stationed in the country in the 1990s. He also said that he is not going to repeat this mistake and to surrender “several hundred kilograms” of enriched uranium that Belarus currently possesses. This confirms two hypotheses about Belarus’ plans to develop nuclear energy. First, as we already mentioned it is is part of the power game involving Russia and other countries. In particular, Belarus tries to make it more difficult for Russia to implement its commitment to withdraw enriched uranium from a number of countries to reduce the proliferation risks. This is a bargaining chip in Belarus-Russia energy negotiations (which involve nuclear energy, gas and oil). (more…)
April 15, 2010
Is Serbia ready for nuclear power? If Russia helps.
SETimes.com Is Serbia ready for nuclear power?
Serbia may need nuclear power because according to the Head of the national electric utility (EPS) “[it] is surrounded by countries that already have nuclear plants or plan to build them … That will significantly affect competitiveness of the EPS on the future open market, where nuclear power will be dominant because energy from coal is burdened with high ecological taxes.” This is of course a very interesting view.
Another interesting observation is that Serbia naturally lacks financial resources and other capacity to build nuclear power. But it has a friend.
In December, Russian Ambassador to Belgrade Aleksandar Konuzin said, “Serbia [is] seriously considering constructing a nuclear plant — and Russia is willing to help in that intention in a partner way and with joint investments.”
In our earlier entry Jessica Jewell refers to her findings that only a small proportion of countries that declare their intention to launch new nuclear energy programs have resources to do it. Serbia is not one of the 52 newcomers analyzed in this study but it is likely to face limitations similar to that of Belarus. Unless, of course, Russia helps. It actually may (if China does not get involved).
Russia will help Belarus with nuclear. As long as China is out.
In a recent interview, the Russian Ambassador to Belarus confirmed that Russia is willing to help Belarus with constructing a nuclear power plant (including presumably providing a credit and expertise). However, this help will not be available if China is involved. Apparently China is also interested to participate in the construction of this power plant, which would meet Belarus’ goal of diversification. But Russia is not happy about this. According to the Ambassador, Chinese are welcome to help with credits and perhaps infrastructure but they should not be close to any technology.
Thus nuclear technology is looked upon as an important and carefully guarded asset. Not less so than oil reserves and pipelines.
While we are on the subject, it is useful to note that Gazprom has more or less achieved control over Beltransgaz, a company transitting Russian gas through Belarus to Central and Eastern Europe.
