WT53 – Energy management

Workshop presentation

Energy is at the centre of life and activity in all societies. For millennia, these societies have been dependent on local energy sources and the preservation of a balance between the society and the available energy resources has been at the centre of public policies. From the 18th century onwards, the economic and industrial development experienced in the West has relied with increasing intensity on the activation of new sources of energy, whether fossil-based (coal, oil, gas), nuclear or coming from other regions; importing agricultural or manufactured goods that consume energy in the context of the development of international trade.

For a long time, the increase in per capita energy consumption has been practically synonymous with economic development. From the end of the 1960s, a certain number of major disruptions occurred, notably the two oil crises in 1974 and 1980. These made Western countries aware of their dependence on the fossil-energy producing countries which hold most of the world’s reserves. The issues of energy independence and efficiency in energy use gradually emerged as crucial issues for economically developed countries.

From the 1980s onwards, the rapid development of emerging countries, symbolised by China, has led to a rapid growth in their energy needs, all the more so since the activities that were developing were big consumers of energy. Indeed, studies show that the rapid growth in energy efficiency, for example in the European countries, masks the fact that these countries are buying from abroad, notably from the emerging countries, products with a high energy content, which represents a hidden consumption of energy.

From the 1980s onwards, a new awareness has emerged slowly but surely: the fact that human activities were upsetting the principal balances of life on earth. The increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere as a result of human activity, especially the consumption of fossil fuels and the resulting carbon dioxide emissions, is in the process of changing the climate.

It now seems accepted everywhere that only a fair distribution of fossil energy resources between the different regions of the world and a dramatic reduction in the energy content of our way of life will make both peace and the survival of humanity possible. But this change, at the heart of what is called sustainable development, is a radical change. It has barely begun, even if political and economic scientific discourse on this issue has grown. This is because the change is particularly complex since energy is everywhere in our lives: in farming, in industry, in transport, in our homes, in the public services. In particular the organisation of cities and the design of housing represent, in the countries that have been developed longest, two thirds of energy consumption.

Sustainable energy policies therefore imply cooperation at all levels of governance, from the design of cities and agricultural activity, at local level, or the decentralised production of energy, to the new global regulations that are still being sought, as shown by the difficulty in successfully implementing the Kyoto Protocol.

The issue of the recognition of the “right to energy” for all societies like the issue of the “ecological debt” resulting from past economic development will be one of the priorities on the international agenda in the decades to come. Energy will be at the same time a source of potential competition and conflict, and one of the major issues of cooperation.