After Kyoto: Are There Rational Pathways to a Sustainable Global Energy System?

• Author: Smith, Matthew G.
• Position: Review

After Kyoto: Are There Rational Pathways to a Sustainable Global Energy System?

1998 Aspen Energy Policy Forum Report (Washington, DC: The Aspen Institute, 1998) 51 pp.

In 1998 the Aspen Institute convened its annual Energy Policy Forum of more than 100 government, academic and industry leaders to discuss timely issues related to energy. Since 1977 the Forum has allowed a wide range of experts to confront difficult energy policy issues in this open and interdisciplinary exchange. To avoid dogmatic, oversimplified or partisan responses from panelists, the Aspen Institute sets ground rules ensuring an informal, not-for-attribution format that nurtures candid discussion. The findings of the policy forums are summarized in published reports. The 1998 Forum report is titled, After Kyoto: Are There Rational Pathways to a Sustainable Global Energy System? In this effort to collect and summarize the diverse opinions of the forum participants, the Aspen Institute and its rapporteur Paul Runci have shed light on ideas that demonstrate a surprising degree of common ground.

As suggested by the report's title, the 1998 Energy Policy Forum took as its topic the December 1997 international conference on climate change in Kyoto, Japan. At Kyoto, international leaders had negotiated a groundbreaking Protocol to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, which had been drawn up in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Because climate change today is primarily a function of carbon emissions due to energy production, potential policies to address this problem must relate to energy use. Kyoto was thus an apt subject for the Aspen Energy Policy Forum, since the protocol's implementation will be both the cause and effect of changes in technology, economic competition, market structures, fuel choices and a host of other national and transnational energy issues. Participants were asked to forgo debates on the science of climate change and focus on the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol itself. They were presented with five main subjects for consideration: time frame, cost, equity, technology and governance issues.

The four days of discussion were characterized...