Resources

Two major challenges will have to be addressed on the way towards a “postcarbon society”: the adoption of new forms of energy (cf. security of supply, availability of resources, oil price) and the adaptation to the climate change that is already taking place.
Most of the time, these issues are tackled from the supply side and the technological perspective. But the demand side is crucial. The political initiatives, the economic incentives and the social behaviour can make a difference. This publication covers issues including in the long term such as globalisation, behavioural changes, market mechanisms, “rethinking the city”, social acceptability, job creation, land-use and public services. It also addresses the role of politics and social actors (businesses and trade unions) as well as the new governance for a post-carbon society.

This publication aims to give an overview of the methods and results concerning the future challenges in energy. Using various tools for energy foresight – quantitative models, Delphi survey and back-casting approach – Energy futures analyses Europe in a world context. It also highlights the importance of research in the energy field. Finally, it presents EU projects in this field at the cross roads of technology and socio-economy.

The European Union is concerned by the competitiveness, security and sustainability of its energy system. This publication presents the main results of the ENCOURAGED project that assessed the potential energy corridors between the EU and its neighbouring countries addressing in particular the issues on natural gas, electricity and hydrogen. The EU neighbouring countries are the main suppliers and transit countries of oil and natural gas. The dependency of the EU on imported gas supplies is largely increasing in the next years. Therefore, the role of neighbouring countries will grow significantly in the next decades and will probably extend to electricity exchanges and perhaps, in the next decades, to hydrogen supply. Three main points are of particular importance for the integration of the energy markets of the EU and neighbouring countries: to get compatible interconnections, compatible market framework and compatible environmental policies.

This report is an output of the Resources Futures project, which explores the range of critical constraints and uncertainties faced globally, and the implications for future policies and political agendas. The report builds on the findings of a study prepared for the National Intelligence Council (NIC) in early 2012 assessing the impacts of natural resources on US national security by 2020, 2030 and 2040.
The spectre of resource insecurity has come back with a vengeance. The world is undergoing a period of intensified resource stress, driven in part by the scale and speed of demand growth from emerging economies and a decade of tight commodity markets. Poorly designed and short-sighted policies are also making things worse, not better. Whether or not resources are actually running out, the outlook is one of supply disruptions, volatile prices, accelerated environmental degradation and rising political tensions over resource access. Fears of resource scarcity are not new. On many occasions, higher rates of investment and improved technology have resolved the problem of the day, though often with additional environmental and social costs. With the maturation of technologies to access non-conventional gas and oil, as well as the global economic downturn, some analysts suggest that the resource boom of the past decade is coming to an end – especially in the extractive industries – and that resource related tensions will ease. The hard truth is that many of the fundamental conditions that gave rise to the tight markets in the past ten years remain. In the case of food, the world remains only one or two bad harvests away from another global crisis. Lower prices in the meantime may simply trigger another bout of resource binge, especially in the large and growing developing countries. This report focuses on the new political economy of resources. It analyses the latest global trends in the production, trade and consumption of key raw materials or intermediate products and explores how defensive and offensive moves by governments and other stakeholders are creating new fault lines on top of existing weaknesses and uncertainties. The report also proposes a series of critical interventions, including new informal dialogues involving a group of systemically significant producer and consumer countries (‘Resource 30’ or R30) to tackle resource price volatility and to improve confidence and coordination in increasingly integrated global resource markets.