Energy security and climate change mitigation: interaction in long-term global scenarios

J. Jewell. (2013). Energy security and climate change mitigation: interaction in long-term global scenarios. Doctoral dissertation, Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy, Central European University, Budapest.

The connection between climate mitigation and energy security is crucial for linking the global problem of climate change to national energy interests but is far from trivial. While energy security is an immediate concern of ensuring general stability of energy systems, climate change mitigation is a long-term issue requiring massive transformations. Moreover, while energy security emerged as a policy problem which only recently drew scholarly attention, climate change emerged as a scientific curiosity and only recently entered the policy arena. These different realities result in a gap between energy security and climate change research.

This thesis contributes to bridging this gap by analyzing energy security in 70 global scenarios from six integrated assessment models. I develop an energy security assessment framework which is generic enough to be relevant under radically different energy systems yet rooted in historic energy security concerns. The framework introduces the concept of vital energy systems and three perspectives on energy security: sovereignty, robustness and resilience. I use 31 indicators to test the effect of different climate policies on energy security under different assumptions of economic growth, fossil fuel availability and technological choices.

I find that stabilizing the greenhouse gas concentration at 450 ppm CO2 -eq. leads to a reduction in global energy trade by 20%–70% by 2050 and 50%–85% by 2100 compared to the baseline. Oil extraction drops from a maximum of 100% of proven reserves and resources in the baseline to 50% under climate policies. Fossil resource availability and GDP growth affect energy trade in the baseline but not in climate stabilization scenarios.

Climate policies lead to an increase in diversity of energy options in electricity generation and transportation. There are certain qualifications to these energy security gains depending on technological choices and time horizons analyzed. Climate policies lead to lower imports and higher energy diversity in the E.U., China and India. However, for the U.S. and traditional energy exporters, climate stabilization would likely cause a loss of energy exports which could significantly affect the geopolitics of climate negotiations.