A climate for change? The impacts of climate change on energy politics

Abstract

The geophysical phenomena of climate change impact on the existing organization of energy economies and their attendant politics in multiple ways—at times magnifying and at other times dampening pressures on contemporary energy systems. Climate change has been increasingly viewed as a 'threat multiplier'. However, the geophysical phenomena of climate change are socially and politically mediated by actors with uneven power, capacity and divergent interests in order to support either incumbent or alternative energy pathways. While climate change intensifies and magnifies existing tensions and contradictions in global energy politics around the simultaneous pursuit of growth, security and sustainability, it does not do so in any straightforward or unmediated way. Instead, it gives rise to new concerns in relation to the imperatives of de-carbonization and increasing the resilience of energy systems. Understanding the impact of climate change on energy systems requires taking seriously the necessary role of energy within the global political economy and the relationship between fossil fuels and capitalism. It must be analysed both directly through climate change’s impacts, and indirectly through the uses of political narratives about climate change to sometimes unsettle, and sometimes reinforce, particular energy pathways.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Peter Newell is Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex and Visiting Professor at POLSIS, University of Queensland. He currently holds an ISRF Political Economy Fellowship. Richard Lane is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Copernicus Institute, Utrecht University. His research focuses on environmental governance in the age of the Anthropocene.

Notes

1 The ‘world energy trilemma’ is one of four strategic studies carried out by World Energy Council. The trilemma finds its origin in the Council’s definition of energy sustainability. This definition is based on three core dimensions—energy security, energy equity and environmental sustainability. These three goals constitute a ‘trilemma’, entailing complex interwoven links between public and private actors, governments and regulators, economic and social factors, national resources, environmental concerns and individual behaviour.

2 This institutionalization lagged behind the material abstraction of energy in the form of widespread electrification, divorcing final energy use from its specific source (Mitchell 2008). This was preceded by an even earlier conceptual abstraction through the development and application of the new physics of the nineteenth century (Mirowski 1989; Illich 1974; 2010).

3 This refers to reserves of fossil fuels whose extraction and release into the atmosphere are incompatible with the goals of keeping global warming at least <2 °C (McGlade and Ekins 2015).

4 RCP 8.5 assumes high population growth, relatively slow income growth, modest rates of technological change and energy intensity improvements as well as the absence of effective climate change policies. RCP 8.5 has the highest long-term greenhouse gas emissions of all of the RCPs produced by the IPCC.

5 For a review of European corporate and financial entities involved in land-grabbing outside the EU see, for example, Borras Jr et al. (2016) and Bracco (2016). On land-grabbing and food security in Africa, see, for example, Mutopo et al (2011).

6 The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) predicts that nuclear power will continue to expand globally in the coming years, even as the pace of economic growth slows amid competition from low fossil fuel prices and renewable energy sources. According to IAEA projections, the world’s nuclear power generating capacity could expand to 390.2–598.2 GW(e) by 2030 (IAEA 2016).