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This chapter focuses on health and energy use. Topics discussed include human energy needs, biomass fuels, fossil fuels, hydropower, nuclear power, alternative energy sources, comparing risks, and priorities for action.

The TANSTAAFL principle— ‘There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch’—controls everything on our energy menu. All forms of energy have their negative impacts on sustainable development values—including impacts on the environment and human health, as well as those affecting human rights, empowerment of women, energy security, and the economy. Many ‘free lunches’ are being and will be proposed. Most will be, in the words of one of our foremost climate change experts, ‘planetary methadone for our planetary heroin addiction’ to energy. The key is always to analyse each energy source for its full life-cycle impacts. Fossil fuels have unacceptably more clear, more numerous, more severe, and more permanent risks for our world than most of the alternatives. Viewed through the lens of costs and benefits, getting ‘beyond the carbon economy’ is no longer just an environmentalist issue. It is an environmental and survival necessity. This chapter looks at a number of alternative energy sources such as nuclear power, biomass, hydropower, geothermal energy, solar energy, wind energy, and hydrogen and fuel cells.

This chapter focuses on the fuel and energy sectors in Russia with emphasis on energy policy and legislation. It examines the traditional hydrocarbons, hydropower, nuclear energy, and alternative energy sources. It considers the impact of such international events as the 2006 St Petersburg meeting of the G8 and the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and such national concerns as energy security. It also reviews legislative and institutional measures that define energy preferences. Such topics include tax regulation, fees and charges, benefits, regulation of ownership and privatisation of reserves and energy utilities, permitting and licensing of energy activities, and environmental restrictions.

This chapter analyses Mexico's energy sector from the following perspectives: the importance that the oil industry has had in the Mexican economy since it was nationalised in 1938, taking into account the role of this governmental monopoly as the main source of public income and its influence on social, economic, and technological development; the role of legislation in promoting or preventing the use of alternative energy sources to reduce the dependence on such industry and to deal with environmental degradation; and the role of the Clean Development Mechanism in promoting renewable energy. The chapter includes a revision of the compatibility between the objectives established by Mexican Energy Plans and Programs and the constitutional and legal provisions regarding promotion of renewable energy sources.

This chapter examines Abu Dhabi’s responses to climate change and environmental sustainability through case studies of major alternative energy and sustainability initiatives, including the Masdar initiative and Abu Dhabi’s nuclear energy programme. It also includes a detailed examination of Abu Dhabi’s climate change-related resource scarcities and vulnerabilities. Together with chapter 4, this chapter explores how the multiple natural resource-related pressures have affected Abu Dhabi, and how the government is responding to them. The chapter examines the drivers and motives of change and divergence in Abu Dhabi’s responses to the challenges of energy insecurity, climate change and environmental unsustainability.

This chapter examines Qatar’s responses to climate change and environmental sustainability through case studies of major alternative energy and sustainability initiatives, including those under the umbrella of the Qatar Foundation, and the Qatar National Food Security Programme. It also includes a detailed examination of Qatar’s climate change-related resource scarcities and vulnerabilities. Together with Chapter 6, this chapter explores how the multiple natural resource-related pressures have affected Qatar, and how the government is responding to them. The chapter examines the drivers and motives of change and divergence in Qatar’s responses to the challenges of energy insecurity, climate change and environmental unsustainability.

This chapter outlines the best energy policy for balancing the often-competing goals of cheap, clean, and secure energy, and which would use the price system to fundamentally alter consumer behavior, business behavior, and the incentives to develop alternative-energy technologies. With the pressing problems of climate change and dirty air and water, clean energy is essential to the continued health and prosperity of all nations. Large energy price increases, such as could occur under a cap-and-trade system, basically punish consumers for their past decisions and achieve only small reductions in CO₂ emissions. Under any energy-tax legislation adopted, the tax revenues should be earmarked for offsetting reductions in income and payroll taxes and increases in the earned income tax credit. This approach has an important advantage over cap-and-trade proposals because it allows for greater benefits to the public—through relief from income and other taxes—at the expense of carbon-emitting industries.

This chapter examines the potential constraints for supplying the desired quantity of land, water, energy, and mineral resources. It focuses on the constraints resulting from the linkage of resources. Examples of linkage constraints are urbanization of populations, declining supply of resources, feasibility of alternative energy pathways, and impairment of resource supply due to environmental degradation. All of these resource linkages can severely constrain potential solutions for sustainable development.

Europe’s security of energy supplies is a major concern. Much of Europe’s energy comes from Russia. Some European countries—such as Finland, Estonia, Bulgaria, and Slovakia—depend nearly 100 percent on Russian gas supplies. Another EU aim is to enhance efficiency through well-functioning markets. Other energy policy objectives are energy saving, control of pollution, and the development of new sources of energy. Europe can do all this by implementing its 2009 Third Energy Package and its 2015 Energy Union project. The European Commission is to be commended for the firm stand it has taken against the gas pipeline project Nord Stream2, which contradicts all the aims of the energy union. Since the 1980s, Europe has been the world leader in energy savings and pollution control through high energy taxes and regulation. Over time, Europe needs to abandon its tolerance of state-owned energy companies and favor privatization.

Energy struggles are a global phenomenon. In spite of this, its dimension in Africa is more pronounced for various reasons. This chapter presents the dimension of struggles along with relative responses that abound in Africa. By bringing the memories of African countries through case studies and review of grey literature from different sources on African nations, it shows that from West Africa to East Africa, Central Africa and Southern Africa, energy supply is never adequate or equitably distributed. The inadequacy is rounded off by the act of either meter-locking by the individual users or business investors; cable and or transformer resource theft; vandalization of transformer; or poor maintenance culture in most African communities. Community involvement in the monitoring of energy resources is recommended, along with adoption of alternative energy sources relative to African power and energy consumption.

This chapter contextualizes the challenge of climate change, mitigation, and adaptation in the perennial cultural and intellectual traditions of South Asia, according to which human existence is seen as an integral part of nature in its cycle of birth, growth, decay, and regeneration. It thus locates the idea of sustainability in the existential act of nurturing rather than depleting beyond its tolerable limits, the integrated life support systems of earth, water, and air. The chapter points out that India can set an example for the rest of the world for sustainable development by investing in leapfrog technologies using renewable and biofuels, as it develops its energy, transport, and industrial infrastructure, and builds mass transit systems for cities, based on alternative energy sources. India is also in the process of developing a new institutional structure embodying incentives for adopting the least carbon intensive technologies.

This chapter discusses the following aspects of global warming: the uncertainties, the certainties, the urgencies, and finally, what uncertainties imply about waiting for their resolution before acting. Among the many uncertainties are question such as: How much carbon dioxide may join the atmosphere if nothing is done about it? How much average warming globally is to be expected from some specified increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide and other “green house” gases? What will the world be like in fifty, seventy-five, or a hundred years when climate change may become acute? Amidst these uncertainties is the undeniable fact that the Earth's temperature is rising. What is most urgently needed is research and development, especially multi-government-sponsored R&D. Research should focus on alternatives to fossil fuels; how to capture and sequester carbon dioxide from stationary plants; and how to increase Earth's albedo, its reflectance of incoming sunlight.