This chapter explains why countries obtain nuclear latency. It introduces the drivers and constraints of latency. It conducts a statistical analysis to determine which variables are correlated with nuclear latency onset, and then analyzes twenty-two cases to identify the main motives for getting latency.

The intersection between energy and the environment is regulated on the basis of legal foundations that international economic law has developed on its own or ‘borrowed’ from (or otherwise relied on) such outside regimes as general international law and international environmental law. The borrowed principles, like sovereignty over natural resources or sustainable development, can find their reflection, directly or indirectly, in trade and investment agreements and case law and will continuously affect new developments in this field. This chapter will show that such foundations stemming from the external sources define the basic contours of State’s rights and duties associated with the energy–environment nexus. Moreover, the international trading and investment systems provide self-created legal foundations for environmental policy space as will also be discussed in this chapter. They define the extent to which energy-related restrictive measures driven by environmental considerations can be accepted. The case of the ECT presented at the end of this chapter is a striking example for demonstrating that the legal foundations are not static and may undergo important changes.

Energy supply security has been a crucial energy policy issue for CEE countries at least since the natural gas supply disruptions of 2006 and 2009. This book argues that energy security plays a generally more important role within the CEE region than issues related to climate change. However, this chapter evaluates the interplay between ideas, institutions and the material nature of energy systems in the development of energy policy. In doing so it also highlights the social construction of energy security, demonstrating that energy security is not self-evident or correlated within the CEE region with dependency on energy imports from Russia. Individual CEE countries perceive energy supplies as a security issue to a different extent, identifying the source and extent of insecurity or risk differently, and supporting different policy responses as a result. While some countries, for example, Hungary or Bulgaria, have tended to perceive Russian energy as a means to guarantee energy security, others – most notably, Lithuania and Poland – consider energy security to be one of their main policy issues and imports of Russian energy as one of the main threats to this.

This chapter focuses on the impact of CEE countries on the development of climate and energy policies at the EU level. It is argued that states in the region demonstrate some shared preferences and utilise regional groupings to promote these at the EU level. The chapter discusses the contribution of CEE countries to the development of EU policy – such as Polish efforts to create an ‘Energy NATO’, CEE countries’ efforts to improve energy security following the 2006 and 2009 gas crises, the 2014 Energy Union, and the reaction to the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The chapter argues that the security dimension was given priority by CEE countries at the EU level. They contributed to placing energy security on the EU’s agenda during accession negotiations and the immediate post-accession period; however, their preferences were often not shared by older members. It was the 2006 and 2009 gas supply disruptions that shifted the focus towards energy security in the region, and at the EU level. In 2022 the EU’s dependency on and vulnerability to high levels of energy imports from Russia were brought into sharp focus.

This book explores how the EU has attempted to balance its energy security objectives in the twenty-first century, to achieve security of supply, reasonable prices and ambitious climate goals. Specifically, the book focuses on how these challenges have played out in Central and Eastern Europe in the context of their accession to the EU, as members are both subject to and shape the EU’s agenda and legislative outputs. Here we introduce how general prioritisation of security of supply concerns has constrained and at times enabled energy transitions in the region, and how a consistent concern with import dependence on Russia was discursively adopted by the wider EU in the late 2000s, and as a policy goal from 2022. The introduction presents two main arguments of the book (priority of energy security of the CEE countries over climate goals and heterogeneity of the region) and its research design.

This chapter addresses the legal dimensions of the European Union’s response to the climate change crisis. It introduces the EU’s climate governance strategy for 2030 and 2050, and reviews the key Regulations, Directives and legislative proposals adopted in its pursuit, including the European Climate Law, the Emissions Trading Directive, the Renewable Energy Directive and the proposed Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism Regulation. The chapter discusses the position of the EU both as a key contributor to and a subject of international climate change law, and considers the relation between climate change as a governance challenge and the general principles of EU law, with a focus on solidarity, transparency and public participation. The chapter also examines the regulatory and enforcement strategies that characterise EU climate change law. To this end, the EU Emissions Trading System is examined as an example of the EU approach to market-based regulation, and the Governance Regulation demonstrates the EU’s reliance on ‘soft’, proceduralised enforcement in the climate policy sphere. The chapter’s final section illustrates the difficulty of coherent climate change decision-making, as EU authorities must reconcile internal market goals with energy security demands, sustainability concerns and global fairness concerns.

This chapter analyzes traditional sectors, such as manufacturing and industrialization, infrastructure and construction, oil and gas, and agriculture and agro-processing and their potential in the 4IR. Implications, challenges, and opportunities are discussed in each, as well as how new technologies will hinder or better the potential of the sector. It is discussed how growing opportunities in these sectors will help cultivate better environments for innovation. Potential harms may include the disruption of the labor market, exportations, and infrastructure gaps. In order to reduce the disruptive effects of the 4IR, governments and businesses need to work together to help build training programs, investment initiatives, and digitalization. The proper integration of new technologies can aid help in environmental regulations and productivity growth. Each section in the chapter provides opportunities and strategies to achieve success in the 4IR.

Trump’s America First Energy Plan, which focuses on oil and gas expansion and rolling back regulations, promised to insulate the US economy from the volatile global oil market. In reality, the US shale oil industry, operating within the global oil markets, suffered contractions when oil supplier nations’ price wars caused global oil prices to crash. While the plan promised to bring Americans jobs and prosperity, predicating economic development on oil and gas extraction is a dubious strategy for several reasons. The shale industry, which contributed to the recent boom and expected future production, suffers from a shaky financial foundation. Even prior to COVID-19, traditional investors had begun cutting lending to shale companies and bankruptcies were accelerating. In March 2020, under Congress’s COVID-19 financial rescue package, the Trump administration executed a bailout for the oil and gas industry that shifted financial losses to American taxpayers without securing companies’ agreements to keep workers employed. The bailout replicates the decades-long economic model of the industry, which privatizes profits to the companies, while socializing the costs from the industry, through tax preferences and subsidies for the industry and through various laws that favor extraction over those that suffer from the industry’s adverse impacts.

America faces an energy dilemma – continue down the path of oil and gas drilling or diversify to greater shares of renewable energy. The shale boom in the twenty-first century propelled America to become the largest crude oil producer in the world and a net exporter of natural gas. However, the shale bust from 2014 to 2016 prompted renewed debate on America’s pathway. For decades, successive presidents from Nixon to Obama vowed to end America’s addiction to oil. In reality, federal and state governments granted numerous privileges to the oil and gas sector in exchange for securing energy supply, jobs and tax revenue. In 2017, President Trump took office and launched his “America First Energy Plan,” which expanded oil and gas extraction, facilitated the buildout of oil and gas infrastructure, and hacked away at regulations aimed to protect health, the environment and the climate. The Trump administration’s multipronged actions to favor the oil and gas industry, which went far beyond those of previous administrations, went largely unchecked by the 115th Congress that acquiesced and even abetted its actions. Understanding what the administration did and how it was able to undertake such actions is the first step towards resetting America’s energy and environmental paths.

The settlement of high-level disputes concerning energy trade is a relatively novel phenomenon in the multilateral trading system, although their number is steadily growing. The emergence of such disputes has brought to the fore energy-related concepts not previously faced by WTO panels and the Appellate Body (AB). One crucial concept in this regard is energy security’. The goal of this chapter is to shed light on the emerging notion of energy security in international trade and WTO law. Taking a two-pronged approach, it starts by studying the meaning of the concept of energy security and its evolving role in international (trade) law, and then critically assesses how panels and the AB have dealt with energy security and the implications of this case law for its treatment in future disputes.

The purpose of this chapter is threefold: (1) It explains energy as a concept that has transformed over the years and explains the difference between primary, secondary, renewable and non-renewable energy resources. In so doing, it refers to UN Statistics Division/International Energy Agency sources. (2) It explains how the rules of international trade law are relevant to the energy sector and when these rules become applicable to trade in energy; and (3) It explores the major changes energy markets have undergone in recent decades, focusing on decarbonization, decentralization and energy security.

It discusses the added value that the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) can potentially offer to Chinese external energy security by protecting Chinese outbound investments in countries along the Belt and Road. The geographical scope of the ECT to a large extent covers China’s main energy partners along the ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’. In addition, participating in the modernization of the ECT could help China shape the treaty to reflect the special characteristics of its foreign energy investments and adjust this mechanism to the benefit of China’s increasing energy activities in the large number of BRI counterparties.

Chapter 5 focuses on Turkey’s energy policies in the context of the country’s relations with the West. It provides case studies of Turkey’s rejection of full membership status in the Energy Community Treaty (ECT), the reinstating of the Turkish Stream pipeline project with Russia, and Turkey’s refusal to implement the renewed sanctions against Iran. It makes a case that through rejecting its full membership into the Energy Community Treaty without its full accession into the EU and the revived Turkish Stream project with Russia, Turkey engages in challenging the boundaries of its partnership with the EU in the energy sector, using informed strategic noncooperation, cooperative balancing with Russia, and economic statecraft. Turkey has been signaling to the EU that it can undertake alternative projects to the Southern Gas Corridor project, a project of strategic importance for the EU, which would help EU decrease its dependency on Russia. The chapter further illustrates Turkey's boundary breaking against the USA through the evasion of Iran sanctions from 2010 to 2015 and the announcement of its unwillingness to implement the renewed sanctions against Iran.

Political science does not offer a distinct subdiscipline to address the subject of energy. Insofar as political science has addressed energy, it has focused on issues often neglected by other disciplines, notably the role of geopolitics and international relations, and the domestic politics of resource-rich states. Apart from the different subfields, we examine different approaches including realism, constructivism, liberalism and Marxism. The rise and fall and rise again of academic articles on energy in leading political science journals is reviewed and linked to exogenous forces such as the price of oil. Two distinct energy topics which have received attention are nuclear power and the oil crises of 1973–79 because of their wider geopolitical ramifications. Perhaps the most prominent or consistent thread through studies of the politics of energy is the question of energy security or energy independence. Finally, in recent years, energy has increasingly emerged as a focus for study in environmental politics and climate change politics in particular.

Political science does not offer a distinct subdiscipline to address the subject of energy. Insofar as political science has addressed energy, it has focused on issues often neglected by other disciplines, notably the role of geopolitics and international relations, and the domestic politics of resource-rich states. Apart from the different subfields, we examine different approaches including realism, constructivism, liberalism and Marxism. The rise and fall and rise again of academic articles on energy in leading political science journals is reviewed and linked to exogenous forces such as the price of oil. Two distinct energy topics which have received attention are nuclear power and the oil crises of 1973–79 because of their wider geopolitical ramifications. Perhaps the most prominent or consistent thread through studies of the politics of energy is the question of energy security or energy independence. Finally, in recent years, energy has increasingly emerged as a focus for study in environmental politics and climate change politics in particular.

Securing a stable and reliable energy supply in affordable and environmentally friendly conditions is the ultimate objective of energy law and policy. Energy systems must function ‘free from serious risk of major disruption of service’. Consumers must have access to a sufficient quantity of energy at socially and economically acceptable prices, but at the same time, efforts to mitigate climate change, protect local air quality and address water scarcity must not be undermined. States must therefore ensure that adequate investments are made in energy production and network capacity, without imposing an unreasonable financial burden on industry and the general public. The stakes are high. The failure to deliver energy security undermines economic development and social and environmental protection, and can also threaten social peace and stability.