Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Contesting the Next Energy Revolution
The concept of 'energy system sustainability' refers broadly to policies and practices
that promote the evolution of systems to provide desired energy services in a socially
just and environmentally sensitive manner. The struggle for energy system sustain-
ability is central to any larger vision of sustainable economic development due to
the fundamental role energy systems play in economic activity and the evolution of
human and environmental systems (Simmons, 1989; Smil, 1999; Hall et al., 2003).
Global development over the past three centuries cannot be understood without
appreciating the central role played by energy system transitions - roughly from
wood to coal to oil and electricity (e.g., fi gure 31.1) - reinforced and embedded in
complementary cycles of innovation in transportation, industry, agriculture, com-
munication and war making (Podobnik 2000). The nations that best exploited the
scientifi c, commercial and military potential of these changes achieved wealth,
empire and a world order predicated on continuous social and environmental trans-
formation. The British and US empires of the 19th and 20th centuries were based
on the ability to access, control, and develop the economic and military potential
of each era's cutting-edge energy resource. Residing within the current notion of
sustainable energy transformation, therefore, is the possibility for social and ecologi-
cal revolution as unimaginable as that stimulated by the fi rst electrical power
systems in 19th century New York, Chicago and London.
One challenge to energy system sustainability is that once transformative energy
resources - oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear fi ssion and large hydropower - are now
so socially, technically, and economically embedded in industrialised societies that
they are highly resistant to displacement (Hughes 1987). In 2006, fi ve of the ten
largest Fortune 500 corporations were oil companies, while another four produced
45
Electricity
40
35
Oil
30
25
20
Natural Gas
15
Coal
10
Nuclear
5
Wood
Hydro
-
1800
1850
1875
1900
1925
1950
1975
2005
Figure 31.1
Energy transitions in the USA: primary fuel consumption. (Source: EIA
2007)
