(Photo credit: iStockphoto)
Existing work on energy security tends to overemphasise the prospect of geopolitical competition and conflict over access to resources while under-exploring the promise of cooperation among global and regional economies.
A preoccupation with energy competition
Viewing energy security through the spectre of competition and conflict effectively traps policy planners in a zero-sum analysis that excludes the possibility of cooperation: The energy security of one country can only be achieved at the expense of another. Yet such an approach is fundamentally flawed, since it ignores the increasingly complex interdependence in the energy and product trade chain among countries, globally and regionally.
The preoccupation with energy competition obscures the real issues policymakers need to consider in crafting their national energy policies: The central role of global markets in the demand and supply of energy, particularly oil, as well as the importance of the underlying rules and principles, including institutions, which govern those markets.
Asia Pacific leads global energy consumption
Since 1980, global consumption of primary energy has doubled. Much of the increase has come from Asia and the Pacific. This is due to rapid economic growth, massive investments in infrastructure and a booming construction industry, rising populations and a decline in the use of non-commercial energy, such as biomass and waste.
By 2035, if current trends persist, there will be another 50 percent increase in global energy consumption. Non-members of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) account for over 90 percent of the projected increase in global energy demand, reflecting faster growth rates in their pursuit of modernisation. Energy demand in East Asia will grow faster than in any other region.
Governments are therefore under strong pressure to deliver effective fixes in addressing a dual challenge: Providing adequate, secure and sustained supplies of energy at affordable prices, on the one hand, and mitigating environmental damage as a result of energy consumption, on the other.
A security dilemma for policymakers
For policymakers, this creates a situation that can best be described as a security dilemma. They are confronted with a two-level strategic predicament: First, the dilemma of interpreting the motives, intentions and capabilities of others; second, the dilemma of response, which essentially boils down to the question of whether cooperation or competition should be the preferred policy choice in addressing issues related to energy security.
Underlying this strategic predicament is a situation of fundamental uncertainty. Cooperation provides a policy alternative to address and overcome conflict within a defined framework. In effect, cooperation reduces uncertainty. At the same time, complex interdependence significantly increases the costs of non-cooperation: Pursuing a policy of complete energy independence becomes untenable within a global energy market.
Uneven distribution of energy resources
This paper offers an analytical framework for understanding and crafting cooperation in the energy security complex. It focuses particularly on East Asia, where economies are all highly dependent on uninterrupted supply of energy resources, but the rules and mechanisms for governing energy security are sub-optimal.
The social and economic costs of energy insecurity are considerable. For example, most of the energy resources of the world--a quarter of its oil reserves, more than half of its natural gas and coal reserves and almost two-thirds of its uranium reserves--are in the Asia Pacific, but they are unevenly distributed.
While energy trading is necessary for making these resources available across the region, regional cooperative mechanisms are still underdeveloped. Furthermore, limited transnational collaboration (e.g. in the stockpiling of strategic oil reserves) is the only initiative that makes regional economies less vulnerable to the global oil market, whose volatility has the potential to disrupt vital supplies.
Energy security cooperation needed
Energy governance is characterised by a fractured landscape. The International Energy Agency (IEA) is the primary source of the world's energy statistics, but it is unable to speak for the global energy community, since major oil importers such as China and India are not represented. Nor does IEA have the authority to develop and enforce a global system of mutually agreed energy rules.
Concerns about energy insecurity have led to renewed discussions about the advantages of nuclear power. Yet the virtues of energy security seem to stand in sharp contrast to the vices of nuclear non-proliferation, which raises issues that need to be addressed across the two regimes.
In East Asia, the problem is compounded by the fact that most governments "have considered energy policies in isolation from policies for environmental protection and poverty". The strong nexus among the energy security, nuclear non-proliferation and climate change regimes therefore needs to be considered in crafting energy security cooperation.
For those interested in the full working paper:Section 1investigates the global power shifts that have both global and regional impacts on the nature of collective action problem-solving.Section 2looks into the demand and supply sides of energy security cooperation and introduces the key properties of the regime complex for energy security.Section 3discusses the consequences of regime complexity for energy security cooperation. The conclusions inSection 4highlight building blocks for energy security cooperation in East Asia and propose policy recommendations on how to cooperate under the condition of regime complexity.
This extract was republished with permission from RSIS and is part of its latest Asia Security Initiative Policy series Working Paper No. 18, titled "Cooperating in the Energy Security Regime Complex". The author is a Visiting Senior Fellow and Coordinator of the Energy Security Programme for the Centre for Non-Traditional Security (NTS) Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technologies University, Singapore.
BY : Dr Jochen Prantl, RSIS