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After successfully defending the Northern Cheyenne and Crow Reservations from non-Indian mining, American Indians launched a national campaign to prepare similarly situated energy tribes for the coming onslaught in energy demand. This chapter details those efforts that began with Northern Cheyenne and Crow leaders helping to organize a regional coalition of tribes to fight federally planned development on the Northern Plains. From this defensive alliance, energy tribes then turned to exploring options to mine their own minerals. They worked with federal agencies charged with expanding domestic energy production in the wake of the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo and consulted energy experts familiar with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Ultimately, tribes nationwide formed the Council of Energy Resource Tribes to provide a unified Indian voice to federal energy policymakers, lobby for federal aid in developing tribal resources, and share information about energy development. After much confusion as to CERT’s primary purpose – including whether it was a cartel-like “Native American OPEC” – the organization evolved into a professional consulting firm that both worked with individual tribes to pursue specific mining projects and lobbied the federal government for beneficial grants and policies.

After spending the 1970s developing the institutional capacity to effectively govern their resources, energy tribes now demanded that federal law recognize their authority to make development decisions. This final chapter documents, once again, the pivotal role the Northern Cheyenne tribe played in this process. With Ronald Reagan’s massive budget cuts forcing tribes to look increasingly to private-tribal partnerships to extract their minerals and secure revenue, the Northern Cheyenne executed a 1982 agreement with the Atlantic Richfield Company. Federal officials, however, were reluctant to approve the deal because it did not conform to the 1938 Indian Mineral Leasing Act, exposing how embedded notions of Indian inferiority continued to hinder tribal development. In response, the Northern Cheyenne, the Council of Energy Resource Tribes, and their allies within the federal government and the energy industry, pushed to change the law. The result was the 1982 Indian Mineral Development Act that authorized tribes to enter into whatever type of resource development agreement they desired, subject only to final federal approval. This new law reversed the historic roles of federal and tribal governments, giving energy tribes primary authority to determine the fate of their resources.

The chapter focuses on the analysis of energy resource balance and the ecological limits on energy resources with special reference to the oil crisis in both the global and the Indian context. It discusses the roles of fossil fuels, nuclear energy, hydro resources, renewables like biomass, bioliquids and other aboitic renewables particularly wind and solar energy resources in providing the energy security for India with some sectorwise details as well as their implications in respect of environmental degradation over the full life cycle of their respective uses. The chapter further discusses the economic effects of the ecological limits as expressed in the forms of resource scarcity and environmental pollution. It then reviews the trend of past energy and carbon efficiency of India and the projections of the same in future as per the study of the expert group of the planning commission and discusses their policy implications

Sadly, just as energy tribes secured recognition of their sovereign rights to control resource development, the market for Indian energy collapsed. This Epilogue explains the changes in international energy markets that produced a glut of cheap foreign oil in mid-1980s, making investment in tribal-led energy projects uneconomical. It also updates readers on the fitful attempts by the Northern Cheyenne, Crow, and Navajo to establish mineral revenues amid fluctuating energy markets, and details the intense intra-tribal debates over resource development that continue to divide these communities. Despite these setbacks, however, the book concludes on a hopeful note, describing subsequent changes to federal law that continue to expand tribal control over reservation resources. The last anecdote offers CERT Chairman Peter MacDonald’s 1982 farewell address as an opportunity to summarize the energy tribes’ momentous efforts. These groups mobilized a defense of the homeland, developed the institutional capacity to regulate energy development, and secured legal authority over reservation resources. Only the successful execution of that authority to alleviate suffocating poverty remains.

This chapter focuses on the energy security in Africa. It describes Africa as blessed with abundant energy resources, more than enough to supply her needs. It adds that Africa is underdeveloped, with almost all the countries being classified as low in development, and half ranking amongst the least developed in the world. It notes that development is impossible, or at most an uphill task, in any place where there is no access to conventional energy. It explains that the difference between the rural dweller in a village in Africa and a city dweller lies in the amount of energy available for his use. The chapter is a discourse on energy security in Africa, primarily through the study of continental initiatives under the auspices of the African Union, and on sub-regional cooperative efforts that are aimed at addressing the issue of energy security in west and southern Africa.

This chapter documents the acceptance and at least partial legalisation of public participation in Canadian energy and natural resources regulatory decisions. The core of the chapter goes a step further and investigates the extent to which public participation has moved beyond procedural opportunities and rights to include legal rights for citizens to participate as decision-makers in energy-project approval processes. The thesis of the chapter is that certain ‘bridging’ instruments or processes have emerged that are at least harbingers of citizen empowerment. The most important of these bridging instruments are: consensual dispute-resolution processes that have been established by mineral and energy decision-makers, rights to participant funding, and participation rights embedded in comprehensive aboriginal rights.

Japan's move away from a carbon economy is required for the following two reasons. First, under the Kyoto Protocol, Japan has to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 6 per cent below the 1990 level in the commitment period between 2008 and 2012. A shift from oil to non-carbon energy resources is absolutely required to attain the commitment under the Protocol. Secondly, Japan is heavily dependent on oil most of which is imported from the Middle East. Japan must therefore look beyond hydrocarbons and critically consider the use of alternative energy sources or renewable energy. This chapter discusses the role of law in Japan's move away from carbon. Nuclear energy, which is categorised as quasi-indigenous energy in energy-poor Japan, is seen as unavoidable and is being promoted as an alternative to oil and gas. When long-term world energy policy is considered, nuclear fusion might stave off the anticipated world energy crisis in the late twenty-first century. Japan has been very active in the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) project.

Denmark is one of the countries in the world whose citizens have the ITIOSI formal rights in environmental and energy legislation. These rights were reinforced by Denmark's transposing the Aarhus Convention into national law as early as May 2000 and it ratified the Convention in September 2000. Energy consumption and supply are paramount for achieving sustainable development, and in the field of energy, Denmark has decoupled economic growth from environmental impact. Sustainable development presupposes transparency, democracy, and respect for human rights, but is achievable only through broad international cooperation.

This chapter discusses the production and consumption of renewable energy resources such as fossil fuel, oil, gas, coal, and nuclear energy. It also examines the depletion of geologically sourced fuels and offers solutions for future energy sustainability.

This chapter discusses the need for a legal management regime for the geothermal industry. It identifies three areas of legal uncertainty in the absence of legislation: whether ownership of the resource is vested in the state or the surface landowner; what legal management regime applies to the exploitation of the resource; and what environmental controls are applicable. In New Zealand, and in states and provinces in Australia and Canada where geothermal energy exists in commercial quantities, the legislatures have all concluded that common law rules in this area should be replaced by legislation. In non-common law countries in Europe, recent legislative amendments or new legislation as in Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands have been adopted to reflect the increasing public interest in the further developments of geothermal resources in a transparent, resource-efficient and environmentally-safe way.

Traditional electricity planning in the United States has typically been focused on forecasting future demand and identifying the need for new large generating facilities that involve one-way flows from central power plants to customers. However, legal innovation has incentivized the deployment of more energy resources at the customer end of the electricity network and technological innovation has facilitated rapid expansion in the number and capacity of these distributed energy resources. These changes now require innovation in the type of planning for future energy resources that must be employed to ensure an efficient and reliable electric energy network. Deployment of the rapidly growing number of distributed energy resources —solar and wind generation, combined heat and power, fuel cells, battery storage, demand response and energy efficiency—is facilitated by an increasingly smart grid. This chapter proposes a new, distributed resource-planning process to better integrate all of these distributed resources into the grid.

This chapter considers the variables and issues concerning energy sustainability. It first describes the dimensions of energy sustainability from a societal and conceptual point of view. The three dimensions of energy sustainability are sustainable resource flows, effective infrastructures, and social acceptance. The chapter also examines issues in measuring sustainability of energy resources and lists a few steps for improving measurement capacities through targeted research.

This chapter looks first at global energy trends, focusing on three main themes: energy and economic development seen through the lens of regional trends; energy supply; and energy demand. Energy demand is saturating in developed economies but there is rapid growth in the emerging economies, while in low-income countries higher levels of energy use are needed to underpin economic development. Section 1.3 opens up the energy security issue by looking first at physical resource availability then at trends in global energy trade and markets. Section 1.4 looks at the climate change challenge in relation to energy, putting it in the context of resource availability. It is clear that resource availability cannot be relied upon to limit climate change. Section 1.5 reviews energy projections and scenarios produced by some major businesses and public sector organizations, concluding that energy futures are not only uncertain but contested.

This chapter examines the public-participation movement in various protective sectors of environmental law. The movements to protect endangered species, biodiversity, and fragile ecological areas have both benefited from public-participation mechanisms and have helped to encourage further public-participation activities. This chapter considers the intersection of public participation and mining and energy resources development from the perspective of the principal biodiversity-related conventions. It focuses on the three global conventions of most direct relevance for this topic, namely, the CBD, Ramsar, and the WHC.

This chapter explores the role played by natural resources in Central Asia, particularly China's position over the last decade. This offers an opportunity to address questions of impact, influence, and what China's continued engagement means for Russia, the United States, and the region as a whole. China appears to be forging ahead in its efforts to gain an advantage in Central Asia through developing energy partnerships and fostering greater regional integration, the construction of pipelines that directly link Central Asia with China, and substantial loans for oil and gas that ensure long-term Chinese access to energy resources. Indeed, secure and affordable energy is a strategic Chinese national imperative.

This chapter examines the international law applicable to ‘energy underground’. It considers the extent to which existing treaty and customary law, as well as soft law, are adequate for the regulation of new subsurface energy activities. It shows that existing international law and institutions have largely addressed new subsurface activities involving new transformative technologies for using energy resources. However, there are heightened concerns regarding the environmental risks and social impacts of upstream unconventional hydrocarbon extraction activities, which are reflected in public opposition and in regulatory responses. Key international regulatory gaps also remain for some aspects of energy underground, most notably with respect to the current issues regarding; firstly, transboundary movement of carbon dioxide; secondly, the seemingly intractable inter-generational issue of the long-term storage of nuclear waste and liability; and, finally, the legal status and use of shared oil and gas reservoirs.

This chapter attempts to propose a concept of an energy community, with the European Union Committee of the Regions serving as an example for analysing the role of a consultative body—which groups regional and local energy communities in the decision-making procedure related to investment in energy infrastructure. Three main energy communities are thus identified in this chapter: first, a community that resides at a geographically limited area which enjoys an energy resource is classified as an energy community; second, constitutional law may award to an existing community a number of competences on energy issues, which defines that community as an energy community; and, third, an energy community may also develop when a group of people is negatively affected by a new energy infrastructure. Besides these three main types of energy communities, other kinds of energy communities can also be identified in succeeding chapters.

This introductory chapter first sets out the book's purpose, which is to examine the role of law in governing new and transformative approaches to using underground energy resources. It looks at the extraction of oil and natural gas from unconventional sources like oil and gas shale, tar sands, and coal bed methane, which often call on technologies like horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’). The chapter then discusses the emergence of energy underground; the challenges of the carbon economy; energy in the twenty-first century; restraints on energy projects; predictions regarding energy sources and uses in the coming decades; new developments underground; unconventional oil and gas development; carbon capture and storage; the law of underground energy; and the internationalization of underground energy law. An overview of the five parts of the book is also presented.