1. INTRODUCTION

Renewable resources of energy have immense potential to supply a much larger fraction of the world's electricity, fuel for transportation, and heat and other energy services. Renewable energy can be utilized through a variety of sources, approaches, systems, and technologies:

1. • Plants and algae require sunlight for photosynthesis before they can be converted to biofuels or biopower;

2. • Hydropower capitalizes on rain and snowfall resulting from water evaporation and transpiration;

3. • Wind generates electricity directly by turning a turbine, or indirectly in the form of ocean waves, but the wind itself is driven by the sun;

4. • Tidal and geothermal energy are the only renewable energy resources that are not a direct result of solar energy. Tides rise and fall due to gravitational attraction between the oceans and the moon. The heat trapped in the earth itself is due to both leftover heat from the formation of the planet, and the radioactive decay of elements within the crust, such as uranium and thorium.

When the potential for these energy sources is quantified, the numbers are startling. One recent assessment, which collected actual data on wind speeds (at a hub height of 80 metres) at 7,753 surface stations, identified about 72 terawatts (TW) of potential. One fifth of this potential could satisfy 100 per cent of the world's energy demand and more than seven times its electricity needs. If we exclude biomass and look at solar, wind, geothermal, and hydroelectric energy resources, the world has roughly 3,439,685 terawatt-hours (TWh) of potential — about 201 times the amount of electricity the world consumed in 2007 (see Table 2.1).

So far, less than 0.09 per cent of the potential for renewable energy to meet global energy needs has been harnessed. However, that percentage is starting to increase.

1. INTRODUCTION

Despite a growing concern about fossil energy's contribution to environmental degradation and, particularly, global warming, oil, natural gas, and coal have remained the major sources of energy worldwide. In particular, oil has been the most commonly used type of fossil energy for about a century because of its abundance and also its relatively easier process of extraction, transportation, and utilization compared with coal and gas. Ever since its commercial extraction started in the second half of the nineteenth century, oil has gradually managed to end a few centuries of the domination of coal as the main and an inexpensive source of energy globally since the modern industrial era, with its ever expanding energy requirements, began about 200 years ago. Natural gas, considered an environmentally cleaner type of fossil fuel compared with oil and coal, has slowly increased its share of the global market since the 1960s. However, oil is still the dominant energy fuel in terms of global demand and, thus, consumption. Its current pre-eminent status will likely remain unchallenged in the foreseeable future notwithstanding the necessity of substantial cuts in the usage of pollutive fossil fuels, including oil, to mitigate and eventually reverse global warming caused chiefly, but not exclusively, by greenhouse gases emitted from such energy.

Against this background, it is no wonder if oil has been a key issue globally as a major commodity in demand that is of crucial significance both for oil exporting countries and oil importing ones. For the former, it is a source, if not the source or the single largest source, of revenue, while it is a vital necessity for oil importing countries relying on oil as a main or the main source of energy for their economies. Two logical consequences can be drawn from such realities. First, oil exporting countries unsurprisingly play a major role in the global energy markets and also in international affairs because of their ability to affect oil importing countries' economies.

Without a doubt, energy is a major challenge of the twenty-first century for all economies, large and small alike. The economic upheaval of 2007–10 led to a deep recession in many countries, particularly the largest energy consumers, with the effect of sharply decreasing economic activities and, therefore, energy consumption. In January 2011, there are weak signs of recovery in their respective economies. Nevertheless, the first eleven years of this century have clearly reflected the growing importance of energy for all economies, especially the vibrant and growing Asian ones, both to meet their current needs and also those of their future.

As a general trend in the twenty-first century, energy consumption has been increasing, corrected only for short periods of economic meltdowns throughout the world. This is a reflection of enlarging economies and growing populations whose energy requirements are expanding due to their improving living standards. This reality has increased the importance of energy security as a crucial, if not vital, policy to ensure the ability of all consuming nations to meet their energy requirements while preparing for any potential eventuality.

Regardless of their level of economic development and the living standard of their populations, all countries operate within the international system and its regions to meet their energy requirements. Because of this, various trends in this system and, particularly, in the global energy markets, will affect them all, though to a varying extent, of course, depending on their level of dependency on imported fuels. Such trends could take different shapes and thereby forms of introduction to energy consuming countries, but, regardless of their specific form of implication, they will have short-, medium- or long- term impact on the affected countries. These trends could also have implications for a specific market or markets, while others may have an impact on the entire international energy market.

1. INTRODUCTION

At the close of the year 2009, the natural gas market appears poised for significant changes to the industry. From the macroeconomic perspective, growing confidence in the sustainability of a post-recession recovery heralds the promise of an increase in energy demand. However, this is tempered by an overhang of fiscal indebtedness and trade deficit plaguing developed nations such as United States and many countries in the European Union.

On the environmental front, if binding climate-change policy changes were to ensue from the Copenhagen negotiations in December 2009, it could have an indelible impact on natural gas markets. As a relatively cleaner form of fossil fuel, natural gas is commonly held to be a suitable “transitional fuel” bridging the global switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

There are also significant developments within the natural gas markets over the last decade. Infrastructure investment facilitating the trading of liquefied natural gas (LNG) has been ramped up. Some examples include the construction of receiving and regasification terminals in the gulf coast of the United States and the build-up of liquefaction capacity by Qatar.

Most recently, technological breakthroughs have reduced the cost of extracting gas from shale, rendering shale gas production in North America commercially viable. As such, with an increase in supply potential, coupled with a global energy demand that has yet to recover from the financial crisis started in 2007, natural gas prices were depressed throughout the year 2009 when this chapter was prepared.

Low gas prices are a major concern for gas-producing countries, and this sparks the worry among gas importers that gas exporters could potentially unite in a cartel to control the pricing of natural gas internationally. Against this background, this chapter investigates the feasibility and potential for forming a “Gas OPEC” in the foreseeable future.

1. INTRODUCTION

Traditional interpretations of energy security have centred on supply-side issues of fuel availability, supplier reliability, import dependence, price, and political stability, and have only recently considered the role of social impacts and environmental acceptability. Still absent is an articulation of vulnerabilities caused by non-energy inputs. Nuclear plants cannot generate electricity without fissile material or without sufficient volumes of cooling water. Likewise with water security, as groundwater and surface water resources are stretched to their limits across ever more regions and climate change induces heightened precipitation variability, water sector efforts have shifted in focus from supply to demand, and from development to management. Given that water serves as a key input in exploiting many energy sources and that water is ineluctably dependent on energy, parochial notions of “water security” and “energy security” merit rewriting.

This water-energy nexus refers to the mutual dependence these two resources share, each impacting the ability to achieve security of the other. Since either resource supplies both direct and indirect inputs to the other in various stages of extraction, production, and distribution, changes in the quantity or quality of one inherently affect the other. For example, when heat waves rolled across Europe in 2003 and 2006, and through North America in 2006, power plant operators were forced to cut back generation because of insufficient cooling water. Hydroelectric plants were temporarily constrained by reduced river flows. Conversely, desalination's growth as an energy-intensive solution to supplement freshwater supply demonstrates the bidirectionality of this relationship: that the water sector relies on the energy sector as well. The nexus stipulates inherent trade-offs involved in expanding the resource capacity of either — trade-offs that may be costly in some settings, negligible in others, and perhaps entirely avoidable with integrated planning measures. However, despite the breadth of intersections captured in Table 3.1, policies have more often than not ignored these intersectoral dependencies.

This chapter therefore aims to provide an inexhaustive overview of the water-energy nexus, with an emphasis on the intersection points considered to be of greatest consequence for Asia.

Perhaps the twenty-first century could be named the energy century for at least two major reasons. On the one hand, global energy requirements are expanding on a steady basis, corrected for short periods of fluctuations in demand caused by ups and downs in the performance of all economies, especially the large and/or growing ones. All projections for the foreseeable future suggest the continuity of this trend, reflecting the predictable enlarging of the world's economies, the growing population worldwide, and, by and large, improving living standards, which will all surely encourage more energy consumption. Meeting the phenomenal increase in energy requirements of all countries will be a herculean task in itself and will require a long-term solution since the bulk of the currently used energy is non-renewable and thus finite. Thus, at least because of the rapid depletion of the global oil, gas, and coal resources, the current pattern of consumption will not be sustainable. This will therefore demand finding practical alternatives to fossil energy — a major challenge given that clean and renewable energies as a whole are at the stage of infancy for various reasons.

On the other, there are major environmental challenges with dire consequences for life in all forms on earth should our current wrong pattern of life, environmentally speaking, continue. In particular, our large and growing energy consumption has been the single major factor causing global warming, which is destroying our nature steadily and rapidly. Today, it is quite clear that continuing with this way of life, which reflects a thoughtless and irresponsible pattern of energy consumption, will not be sustainable because of its devastating impact on the environment.

Consequently, for these two reasons at least, energy will be the single major challenge of the twenty-first century. Energy is no doubt important as all countries now put it on their agenda as the top, if not, one of the top issues.

1. INTRODUCTION

Dwindling resources for fossil fuels, rising prices for oil and gas, the threat of climate change, the urgent need to reduce emissions, and the quest for economic growth are some of the factors affecting energy policies in countries in Asia and Europe and leading to certain trends in the area of energy cooperation. The issue of energy has long been on the political agenda of the European Union (EU)-Asia cooperation in various frameworks and has grown in importance over the years due to certain factors, including rising oil prices, climate change, and sustainable development. Today a number of official channels for cooperation in the energy sector exist between Asia and Europe: cooperation under the ASEAN framework, bilateral dialogue and cooperation with key countries (China, India, and Japan), and biregional dialogue under the Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM) framework, plus a number of other instruments to promote cooperation. Even though Asia is not the top priority for Europe when it comes to energy cooperation and vice versa, there are valid reasons as to why cooperation in this sector is beneficial for both regions (e.g. technology transfer, new markets, and combating climate change). This chapter gives a descriptive overview of the existing mechanisms for cooperation, looks at what issues are priorities in both continents, and discusses the perceived trend of moving from competition to cooperation in energy policies between them. Such cooperation is significant for it is one of the major trends affecting energy markets.

2. ASIA-EUROPE COOPERATION IN CONTEXT

The European Union's external policies are based on the firm belief that multilateralism is the only way to solve future challenges and that it needs to speak with one voice in order to level its strength. This attitude is also increasingly reflected in the European Union's external energy policy as will become obvious in the following paragraphs.

This chapter examines the complex connections between globalization and war. There are many reasons for war today. It appears that there are wars on virtually every front. There are cultural wars and social wars at different levels in each economy. But perhaps the most consequential in a neoliberal capitalist world order are financial wars. When the Americans “won” the Cold War, everyone thought that capitalism was the economic answer to the less attractive and more inefficient alternative provided by the Soviets. No one could have imagined that the sub-prime crisis that actually began in the late 1990s — not ten years after the Cold War ended — would eventually balloon and burst all over Wall Street in 2008. People are making comparisons in the streets of New York City. They are comparing the consequences of 9/11's terrorist attack on the WTC and the financial terrorism of 2008 that has so far cost an estimated US$16 trillion and counting.

While the discussion of globalization involves competitive world markets and local entrepreneurialism, all these seem like empty words in the face of the financial wars of the economic world. In 2007 experts warned of a new economic recession because contemporary financial (but expert) speculation — based on sophisticated predictive tools — indicated that the global economy had run into a ten-year economic boom-and-bust cycle. There were others that argued that the global economy was experiencing increasing levels of intense economic competition with the amount of time between peaks and troughs being reduced through the compression of time into space by new technologies. Hence the operational hypothesis here is that new technologies compress time into space. The collapse of time into space means that an increasing set of events can be carried out in a shorter frame of time, but there are problems with such a compression. One of the most significant consequences of such compression is that the entities that occupy each discrete event are not prepared for extraneous adversity. Therefore, the rapid compression of financial time into political space often creates internal pressures which expose systemic weaknesses. The weaknesses become magnified when structures built for specific events are stressed beyond their limits. The sub-prime crisis is a case in point. And all this was fuelled by greed. Greed on the part of the banks and institutions and other underwriters as well as individuals.

THE GLOBALIZATION OF (IM)PERFECTION

Foucault was concerned with authoritarianism in Western cultures and societies. He criticized the embedded structures of authoritarian politics serving the wealthiest minorities. His criticisms made him unpopular among politicians and conservative critics. With the exception of the Academy, Foucault was demonized by the establishment both in many European and U.S. cities and became the target of homophobia and xenophobia.

The deification of Foucault or demonization of his work is only part of the picture of his philosophy. Foucault was as imperfect a man as he was diabolically precise as a cultural historian and an intellectual. In 1996, Reid asked whether Foucault was even concerned about “willingly spreading HIV” in his desire for sado-masochism among his partners of the underground sex clubs that he visited. Foucault's visits to America are a reminder of human imperfections, regardless of social and economic status, regardless of intellect. Attendance at the best universities, whatever that might mean, does not make the student a better person.

Humanity desires perfection as it portrays imperfection. If our perfections are celebrated in our conjoint successes as human beings, then there is much reason to celebrate. Some of humanity's achievements can be summarized in: Locke's Two Treatises on Government (1689) and the right to overthrow rogue governments; the declaration of the first Ten Amendments to the U.S. Constitution as the Bill of Rights (1789); Wilberforce's maiden parliamentary speech against the slave trade (1789); Jean Barnard Foucault's invention of the rotation of the earth in 1851 and Jean Leon Foucault's invention of the gyroscope in 1852; Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792); the founding of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (the Martin Act of 1822); Dicey's popular Law of the Constitution (1895); Einstein's discoveries from 1905 till his death in 1955 in Princeton, NJ; the Wright brothers’ activities in the early 1900s; the discovery of airconditioning in the 1920s;