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Today's global energy system faces two major challenges: how to secure the supply of reliable and affordable energy; and how to rapidly transform to a low-carbon, efficient and environmentally harmless energy supply. In this rigorous and illuminating book, Michael Bradshaw explores the key aspects of the current global energy dilemma and examines how it is playing out across the major regions and countries of the world.
Global Energy Dilemmas begins by charting the development of the current global energy system – exploring its key characteristics with a focus upon energy security and the relationship between energy, economic development and climate change. The next four chapters offer in-depth analyses of four distinct global energy dilemmas in different parts of the world: the challenge of sustaining affluence and decarbonising energy services in the high-energy economies of the developed world; the legacies of the centrally planned economy and the consequences of liberalisation in the post-socialist world; growing energy demand and emissions growth associated with the emerging regions; and finally, the quest to provide universal access to modern energy services in the developing world in a manner that is both economically and environmentally sustainable. Identifying the governance structures and policy options available to tackle the global energy dilemma, Global Energy Dilemmas concludes that only an integrated approach – sensitive to regional issues – can reconcile the interests and needs of those facing differing energy challenges across the world today.
List of tables, boxes and figures
List of acronyms
Preface
1 Introduction
2 The Global Energy Dilemmas Nexus
3 Sustaining Affluence
4 Legacies and Liberalisation
5 Fuelling Growth
6 Energising Development
7 Conclusions
Appendix
Bibliography
Michael Bradshaw is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Leicester. In 2014 he will take up the post of Professor of Global Energy at Warwick Business School.
"The best single-volume guide to the problems of energy that I have come across. It is comprehensive, thoroughly researched, up-to-date, and, most important, provides readers with a coherent framework for making smart decisions about energy policy."
– Michael Klare, Hampshire College
"For too long geographers have neglected the study of energy. I, therefore, applaud Michael Bradshaw's timely, wide-ranging and up-to-date book on the global energy challenge and the highly diverse ways that this is played out in different types of economy across the globe. Drawing on a wide range of literatures, he shows with great clarity that the relationships between energy, economy and the environment are complex and that to understand them geography matters."
– Judith Rees, President of the Royal Geographic Society
"A highly readable, accurate, thoughtful and well-organized overview of a complex and urgent issue. How energy is managed in the years ahead may decide the welfare of humankind for generations. Understanding energy and climate change is critical to all sectors of social activity; reading this book provides that understanding."
– Richard Matthew, University of California Irvine
