Energy security through demand reduction: shifting the security paradigm
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Abstract:
Geopolitical tensions, increasingly severe climate disasters, global supply chain disruptions, and decarbonisation imperatives are challenging state efforts to deliver energy security. Most energy security perspectives focus on securing energies supplies and assume energy demand as constant or increasing. However, energy demand is highly mutable. Better consideration of energy demand in energy security conversations can open up a wide range of new options for ensuring security through the process of energy transition, many of which have strong co-benefits across climate, environment, and human health and wellbeing. This talk develops this argument using an energy security framework that asks ‘security for whom, of which values, and from which threats?’. Analysis reveals that energy security perspectives that account for both energy supply and demand foreground many issues that are often externalised in supply focused perspectives (e.g., energy poverty, climate action, equity), while delivering more robust and actionable security agendas.
Bio:
Marie Claire Brisbois is an Associate Professor of Energy Policy in SPRU, and Co-director of the Sussex Energy Group. Her research examines questions of power, politics and influence in energy, water, and climate. She works on projects examining the political implications of decentralising energy systems, governance of energy demand, security implications of climate change and energy transitions, and social and political responses to decarbonisation.