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41. The NATO Pipeline System: a forgotten defence asset

Author:
Dominik P. Jankowski
Publication Date:
04-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
NATO Defense College
Abstract:
Over the last decade, energy security has become a permanent element of NATO's strategic thinking, integrated into numerous NATO policies and activities. In fact, restoring the prominence of energy security within the Alliance was not easy, especially as this policy was considered primarily a question of national security in the post-Cold War era. It was only at the 2008 Bucharest Summit that NATO was given a dedicated, yet limited, mandate to work in this field. The mandate--based on a set of principles and guidelines--included information and intelligence sharing, cooperation on consequence management, and support for the protection of critical energy infrastructure.
Topic:
Defense Policy, NATO, Energy Policy, European Union, and Economy
Political Geography:
Europe

42. Sustainable Drive, Sustainable Supply: Priorities to Improve the Electric Vehicle Battery Supply Chain

Author:
Patrick Heller, Ethan Elkind, and Ted Lamm
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Natural Resource Governance Institute
Abstract:
The global transition from fossil fuel-powered vehicles to electric vehicles (EVs) will require hundreds of millions of batteries. The need for such massive production raises questions from the general public and critics alike about the sustainability of the battery supply chain, from mining impacts to vehicle carbon emissions. Growing demand for the mineral inputs for battery production can provide an opportunity for mineral-rich countries to generate fiscal revenues and other economic opportunities. But where extraction takes place in countries with weak governance, the benefits expected by citizens and leaders may not materialize; in some cases extraction can exacerbate corruption, human rights abuses and environmental risks. To address these questions, the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at U.C.-Berkeley and NRGI are conducting a stakeholder-led research initiative focused on identifying strategies to improve sustainability and governance across the EV battery supply chain. CLEE and NRGI convened leaders from across the mining, battery manufacturing, automaker, and governance observer/advocate sectors, to develop policy and industry responses to human rights, governance, environmental, and other risks facing the supply chain. This report "Sustainable Drive, Sustainable Supply: Priorities to Improve the Electric Vehicle Battery Supply Chain" shares the major conclusions of this multi-stakeholder convening and accompanying outreach to experts in the field: Lack of coordinated action, accountability, and access to information across the supply chain hinder sustainability efforts Inadequate coordination and data sharing across multiple supply chain standards limit adherence Regulatory and logistical barriers inhibit battery life extension, reuse, and recycling The report recommends the following priorities as industry, government and nonprofit leaders respond to these challenges: Industry leaders, governments and civil society could strengthen mechanisms to improve data transparency and promote neutral and reliable information-sharing to level the playing field between actors across the supply chain and between governments and companies Industry leaders, governments and civil society could ensure greater application of supply chain sustainability best practices by defining and categorizing existing standards and initiatives to develop essential criteria, facilitate comparison and equivalency, and streamline adherence for each segment of the supply chain Governments and industry leaders could create new incentives for supply chain actors to participate in and adhere to existing standards and initiatives, which may include sustainability labeling and certification initiatives Industry leaders could design batteries proactively for disassembly (enabling recycling and reuse), and industry leaders and governments could collaborate to build regional infrastructure for battery recycling and transportation and create regulatory certainty for recycling
Topic:
Energy Policy, Sustainability, and Supply Chains
Political Geography:
Global Focus

43. Coronavirus, Oil and Latin America: The Urgency of Economic Diversification and Energy Transition

Author:
Carlos Monge
Publication Date:
08-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Natural Resource Governance Institute
Abstract:
Key messages: Companies are demanding temporary bailouts, requesting that governments subsidize them with breakeven prices over sale prices, and allow them to postpone tax and royalty payments and agreed investments. Such actions may be necessary to preserve jobs and ensure domestic energy supplies. Governments are considering lowering social and environmental standards, fast tracking procedures and providing long-term subsidies to support ongoing projects and to attract new investments. For an industry already facing its twilight, these actions are not justified. Governments must urgently move ahead with economic diversification and energy transitions to ensure the availability of jobs, energy and fiscal incomes that the oil industry currently provides.
Topic:
Energy Policy, Oil, Diversification, Renewable Energy, Coronavirus, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Colombia, South America, Central America, Mexico, and Peru

44. Coronavirus, Mining and Latin America: A Baseless “Race to the Bottom”

Author:
Carlos Monge
Publication Date:
08-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Natural Resource Governance Institute
Abstract:
Mining companies are asking governments to make consultation and environmental procedures more flexible to mitigate production risks and attract new investments. However, there is no real reason to slacken regulations in order to promote mining in Latin America. Conversely, the region should strengthen these standards to prepare for a possible new mining cycle fueled by the transition to clean energy. In the event of a new mining cycle, governments should safeguard against overreliance on commodity exports and the use of fossil fuels. Instead, governments and companies should explore ways in which the mining sector can contribute to economic diversifications and energy transitions. Demand and prices for minerals produced in the region have fallen as a result of the global recession. Logistical issues resultant from pandemic-related lockdowns have slowed internal production. Consequently, mining taxes and royalties will likely fall this year. Prices have not fallen enough to threaten the commercial feasibility of current projects, the global investment budget remains robust, and the region is attractive to mining investors. Furthermore, the global transition to clean and sustainable energies will most probably increase the demand and prices for the critical minerals (copper, silver, lithium and others) produced in the region.
Topic:
Energy Policy, Commodities, Mining, Coronavirus, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Latin America

45. Winds of Change, or More of the Same?

Author:
Tomas Jermalavicius, Priit Mändmaa, Emma Hakala, Tomas Janeliūnas, Juris Ozoliņš, and Krystian Kowalewski
Publication Date:
05-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
International Centre for Defence and Security - ICDS
Abstract:
By coincidence perhaps more than design, the ‘winds of change’ in the twelve months between autumn 2018 and 2019 ushered in new governments—whether through national elections or through coalition reshuffling—in five Baltic Sea littoral states: Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. Yet, amidst sometimes rather turbulent domestic political debates, one key cluster of topics was virtually absent: energy security and climate policy. With the vital exception of Finland—a state with a relatively strong Green movement and long tradition of climate and environmental activism—no country saw climate or energy security targets raised as key campaign issues. To the extent that energy security and climate topics were mentioned at all, they either were minimized due to parties’ fear of alienating key voting blocs (as with the coal mining sector in Poland), confined to energy stakeholders and technical audiences due their complexity (as with electricity desynchronisation in the Baltic countries) or completely assimilated into a cross-party foreign policy consensus (as in the universal opposition in Lithuania to the Astravyets nuclear power plant project in Belarus). While domestic factors—including perceived national interests in ensuring energy self-sufficiency—contributed to a serious case of policy inertia, small and interconnected countries do not of course exist in a vacuum. Accordingly, international factors—from the continuing use of energy policy as an instrument of geopolitical power by Russia, to the growing consensus in the EU in favor of more ambitious climate targets—have done more to raise the salience of these issues, especially after the von der Leyen Commission took office in Brussels at the end of 2019 and put forward the so-called European Green Deal. These exogenous factors have finally, for instance, triggered a broader reassessment in Estonia of that country’s rather leisurely planned phase-out of oil shale power generation, while pushing political leaders in all five countries at least rhetorically to embrace the goal of a carbon-neutral future (albeit with considerable differences in timelines and methodology). Amidst a volatile international economic and geopolitical context that—since the time work began on this report—now includes a major global pandemic and a dramatic fall in fossil fuel demand and prices, the region’s political and economic leaders clearly cannot count on being able to make their policy selections in a vacuum. While the goal of an integrated regional energy market is closer than ever to being achieved, regional cooperation still has much to be desired; differing attitudes to issues both technical (e.g. harmonising natural gas regulations, which has left Lithuania outside a new regional market) or fundamental (importing third-country electricity generated without regard to EU climate or pollution standards) leave all five countries less able to respond to challenges ahead. While the region’s countries have largely relied on Brussels to broker compromises (often with the help of considerable funding), in a post-pandemic world, both the political bandwidth and financial resources will likely be constrained. In its country sections, this report captures a valuable snapshot of the relative inertia as well as the degree of evolution of the energy and climate policies of the five countries in the face of that year’s fairly calm international context. Given the significant economic, human, and political changes underway as a result of the pandemic, however, it is an open question to what extent the region can weather the far more turbulent times ahead. The political and societal willingness to pursue the energy transition to a carbon-neutral future through new—more ambitious and certainly more expensive—energy and climate policies as a response to the climate emergency will very much depend on how the impact of the pandemic plays out globally, in Europe and in the Baltic area. It will also require strong leadership from a new generation of political, business and societal leaders able to see green recovery as a major opportunity for their nations in terms of economic development, social welfare and national security.
Topic:
Security, Energy Policy, Environment, Politics, Governance, European Union, Economy, Sustainability, and Resilience
Political Geography:
Europe, Poland, and Baltic States

46. Energy Poverty in Zambia

Author:
Bernard Tembo, Rabecca Hatoongo-Masenke, and Chama Bowa-Mundia
Publication Date:
09-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Zambia Institute for Policy Analysis and Research (ZIPAR)
Abstract:
Of the estimated 3.01 million households in Zambia, in 2015, only 35.8% and 16.1% utilised clean energy fuels for their lighting and cooking services respectively1 (CSO, 2016). Usage and access to clean energy is essential for economic growth, human development and more generally poverty reduction. This notwithstanding, access has remained low in many developing countries. For instance, 1.1 billion of the total global population do not have access to electricity, of which majority are found in Asia, Africa and Oceania (United Nations, 2016). Furthermore, the majority of this population is found in rural areas. Given the centrality of energy to people's everyday life, governments worldwide have devised di erent policies and mechanisms to enhance the use of clean energy. Limited access and use of clean energy is mainly thought of as an issue of a ordability (Barnes and Floor, 1996; Pachauri et al., 2004; Rosnes and Vennemo, 2012; Murtaza and Faridi, 2014; Ismail and Khembo, 2015; GRZ, 2017; Venkateswaran et al., 2018; Kyprianou et al., 2019; Oum, 2019; Yan et al., 2019). Hence, the subsidy policies being implemented in many countries. On the one hand, it has been observed that lack of access to clean energy is a sign of poverty; while on the other hand, access to clean energy helps in the alleviation of poverty (Pachauri et al., 2004; Nussbaumer et al., 2011; Okwanya and Abah, 2018). However, in some cases, access to clean energy is hampered by both the price of the energy (i.e. an a ordability issue) and by availability of infrastructure to deliver the required energy. Thus, in such situations, some governments have had to borrow to facilitate the development and expansion of energy infrastructure; on top of subsidising the use of clean energy. This notwithstanding, the lack of use of clean energy at household level is not well understood. For instance, it is thought that if a household is classi ed as income poor, then it will not be able to use electricity (Pachauri et al., 2004; Murtaza and Faridi, 2014). And in such cases, some governments opt to implement subsidy policies. While this approach has proved useful for some households, it is not an e ective approach of delivering clean energy to the people who need it the most. There is, therefore, great need to identify aspects that determine whether a household would have access to clean energy and let alone use it. This knowledge would be critical in designing policies that hope to increase utilisation of clean energy fuels. As such, this paper sought to understand energy poverty among households in Zambia. Energy poverty is a concept concerned with lack of access and use of modern energy fuels.
Topic:
Energy Policy, Poverty, Infrastructure, and Electricity
Political Geography:
Africa and Zambia

47. Scaling up Private Investment in Low-Carbon Energy Systems through Regional Cooperation: Market-Based Trade Policy Measures

Author:
Kaliappa Kalirajan, Huong Thi Thu Tran, and Yochang Liu
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)
Abstract:
This study aims to analyse the possibility and challenges of encouraging private sector investment in low-carbon energy systems in Asia, particularly across the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) member countries, and to suggest an effective policy framework that governments could apply to improve the development and dissemination of low-carbon energy goods and technologies. The research questions examined in this study are: What type of policy measures affect trade in low-carbon energy systems transition, particularly the renewable energy transition? How can investment signals and incentives be reframed to scale up private finance in renewable energy through regional cooperation? The objective is to investigate and provide several market-based feasible trade policy and investment policy tools for both national and regional markets that governments could adopt to accelerate the speed of private financing of the low-carbon energy industry, particularly the renewable energy industry.
Topic:
Energy Policy, Markets, Trade, and Renewable Energy
Political Geography:
South Asia, East Asia, Asia, and Southeast Asia

48. Building the Banking Sector’s Capacity for Green Infrastructure Investments for a Low-Carbon Economy

Author:
Takashi Hongo and Venkatachalam Anbumozhi
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)
Abstract:
The construction of green infrastructure, using advanced technology and retiring inefficient technology, is essential for the low-carbon transition. Various green infrastructure programs are being implemented, and banks play an important role in facilitating these programs. Many lessons have been learned in improving finance for green infrastructure: (i) measurement, reporting, and verification is a useful tool for identifying green infrastructure investment; but just reduction is not enough for Green Infrastructure and three requirements – carbon dioxide emission reductions, improving energy access, and contributions to sustainable economic growth – connected with the Sustainable Development Goals are necessary; (ii) banks can contribute to realising a positive cycle of cost reduction and diffusion of advanced technology for reducing costs by scaling up markets; and (iii) carbon pricing is essential for removing carbon externalities and making green infrastructure commercially viable. Banks are recommended to have long-term strategies, improve their capacity for scenario analysis, have more dialogue with industry, and develop innovative finance such as carbon markets. Governments are recommended to adopt carbon pricing to encourage finance for green infrastructure.
Topic:
Climate Change, Energy Policy, Environment, Infrastructure, Green Technology, Renewable Energy, and Banking
Political Geography:
Global Focus

49. Unlocking the Potential of Private Financing for Low-carbon Energy Transition: Ideas and Solutions from ASEAN Markets

Author:
Venkatachalam Anbumozhi
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)
Abstract:
Under the Paris Agreement in 2015, the opportunities for the ASEAN Member States (AMS) to maximise low-carbon energy sources to achieve the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) target in reducing carbon emission levels have expanded. In order to move towards a low-carbon energy transition, private sector actors must work together with governments to implement strategies to invest in the low-carbon economy. However, major barriers such as insufficient enabling policy environment, availability of technologies and access to funding somehow impede the implementation. It is believed that unlocking the potentials of private sector would accelerate the transition of low-carbon energy. This paper, based on a market survey, which aimed to identify barriers and risks that private sectors face in accelerating the low-carbon investments. The survey respondents are divided into two categories, Lenders and Borrowers. Analysing 110 total respondents helped to identify the perceived and actual barriers as well as risks underlying to the access to financing and generated potential solution for policymakers to overcome these barriers. The survey results indicate that the main obstacles faced by private sectors are incoherent policies that created a high-risk environment for investment, a lack of access to de-risking mechanisms, and insufficient capacity to communicate the opportunities amongst financial institutions and project developers. To bare these risks, this paper suggests four interdependent solutions – establishment of a low-carbon transition fund, government warranty programme, broadening of de-risking mechanisms, and capacity building programme to accelerate the low-carbon energy transition across ASEAN.
Topic:
Energy Policy, Finance, Renewable Energy, and Private Sector
Political Geography:
Asia and Southeast Asia

50. Energy Reality and Emissions in ASEAN: Energy Modelling Scenarios and Policy Implications

Author:
Han Phoumin, Fukunari Kimura, and Jun Arima
Publication Date:
11-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)
Abstract:
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) faces tremendous challenges regarding the future energy landscape and how the energy transition will embrace a new architecture – including sound policies and technologies to ensure energy access together with affordability, energy security, and energy sustainability. Given the high share of fossil fuels in ASEAN’s current energy mix (oil, coal, and natural gas comprise almost 80%), the clean use of fossil fuels through the deployment of clean technologies is indispensable for decarbonising ASEAN’s emissions. The future energy landscape of ASEAN will rely on today’s actions, policies, and investments to change the fossil fuel-based energy system towards a cleaner energy system, but any decisions and energy policy measures to be rolled out during the energy transition need to be weighed against potentially higher energy costs, affordability issues, and energy security risks. This paper employs energy modelling scenarios to seek plausible policy options for ASEAN to achieve more emissions reductions as well as energy savings, and to assess the extent to which the composition of the energy mix will be changed under various energy policy scenarios. The results imply policy recommendations for accelerating the share of renewables, adopting clean technologies and the clean use of fossil fuels, and investing in climate-resilient energy quality infrastructure.
Topic:
Energy Policy, Science and Technology, Green Technology, Renewable Energy, and Fossil Fuels
Political Geography:
ASEAN