Maintaining Energy Security in a Global Context.

• Author: Jain, Kiran C.
• Position: Review

Maintaining Energy Security in a Global Context William F. Martin, Ryukichi Imai and Helga Steeg (New York: The Trilateral Commission, 1996) 117 pp.

In Maintaining Energy Security in a Global Context, William F. Martin, Ryukichi Imai and Helga Steeg outline three general energy security priorities for policy makers in Europe, North America and Japan. The first entails limiting the vulnerability of the world economy to oil price disruption and an unstable Persian Gulf region. The second involves a long-term desire to assure smooth functioning of the international energy system, with supply meeting increased demand at reasonable prices. The third involves the environmental challenges posed by rising energy consumption in developed and developing countries.

The book includes chapters on energy policy in North America, Europe and Japan; energy investment in Russia, Central Asia and the Caucasus; and the energy dynamics of rapidly industrializing countries, particularly in Asia. The last two chapters focus on nuclear energy and on the environmental challenges facing energy planners. The authors suggest that nuclear power could contribute to energy security and long-term sustainable development, curtailing the growth of fossil fuel emissions as outlined in international agreements signed in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and in Kyoto in 1997.

Although all of the areas addressed by the authors are important aspects of the challenge of energy security, they are not addressed with equal weight in this report to the Trilateral Commission. For example, the authors spend three chapters discussing oil politics in the Middle East, arguing that Trilateral countries have a vested interest in maintaining Middle Eastern peace in order to protect their oil interests. In contrast, they spend only two pages discussing renewable energy resources such as biomass combustion and solar and wind technology.

This report generally assumes that sustained and steady oil production is the most viable way of maintaining energy security According to...