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Chapter 22 - Policies for Energy System Transformations: Objectives and Instruments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2012

Global Energy Assessment Writing Team
By
Mark Jaccard ,
Lawrence Agbemabiese ,
Christian Azar ,
Adilson de Oliveira ,
Carolyn Fischer ,
Brian Fisher ,
Alison Hughes ,
Michael Ohadi ,
Kenji Yamaji  and
Xiliang Zhang
...Show all authors
Mark Jaccard
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University
Lawrence Agbemabiese
Affiliation:
United Nations Environment Programme
Christian Azar
Affiliation:
Chalmers University of Technology
Adilson de Oliveira
Affiliation:
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
Carolyn Fischer
Affiliation:
Resources for the Future
Brian Fisher
Affiliation:
BAEconomics
Alison Hughes
Affiliation:
University of Cape Town
Michael Ohadi
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
Kenji Yamaji
Affiliation:
University of Tokyo
Xiliang Zhang
Affiliation:
Tsinghua University
Igor Bashmakov
Affiliation:
Center for Energy Efficiency
Sabine Schnittger
Affiliation:
BAEconomics
Julie Tran
Affiliation:
British Columbia Utilities Commission
David Victor
Affiliation:
University of California
Charlie Wilson
Affiliation:
Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Mohan Munasinghe
Affiliation:
Munasinghe Institute for Development, Sri Lanka and University of Manchester
Ian Johnson
Affiliation:
Club of Rome
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Summary

Executive Summary

The Global Energy Assessment (GEA) emphasizes the importance of energy to all societies, which explains a longstanding tendency for governments to be closely involved in the energy sector. The nature and extent of this involvement – the degree and types of energy-related policies – depends on a government's ideological orientation, the particular energy resource endowment in its jurisdiction, the development level of its economy, and specific concerns of its society with respect to energy access, energy security, and the environmental and human health impacts of energy supply and use.

In every country, energy's critical role for the goal of sustainable development is widely acknowledged. This means that energy-related policies need to be assessed in terms of performance with respect to the social, economic, and environmental dimensions that are encompassed by the concept of sustainable development. Ideally, energyrelated policies will make advances with respect to all three of these critical sustainability dimensions. But frequently policymakers are faced with difficult trade-offs in which improvement in one dimension is at the cost of another. Thus, the first goal of energy-related policy design should be to seek win-win opportunities for simultaneously advancing social, economic, and environmental goals. When this is not possible, the goal should be to apply decision-support mechanisms that integrate diverse social objectives and values into the policy design process, such as the application of multi-criteria analysis as described by Munasinghe (1992; 2009).

Type
Chapter
Information
Global Energy Assessment
Toward a Sustainable Future
 , pp. 1551 - 1602
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

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