It has been claimed that energy security and climate policy should be considered “two sides of the same coin.”
In 2006, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said, “We must treat energy security and climate security as two sides of the same coin.” Other leaders in Europe, members of the United States Congress and many commentators have echoed Blair’s statement.
Are both energy security and climate policy best addressed by the same policies, or do policies that are best for one goal possibly compromise attainment of the other goal?
The argument is that reducing fossil fuel combustion should increase energy security while also reducing potentially harmful climate change. Although we have two policy goals, they should be treated as one, since one policy instrument can simultaneously further both goals. To examine this argument more carefully we need to discuss what we mean by energy security and climate policy. We also need to investigate the range of policies that could address the two policy goals. Only then can we assess whether both goals are best addressed by the same policies, or whether policies that are best for one goal might compromise attainment of the other goal.
Several policies have been proposed to deal with energy insecurity. Longer term energy security for the world can be increased most effectively by diversifying energy sources and the range of regions from which they come, and especially by increasing supply from more stable countries. Increased substitutability among energy sources also increases resilience to supply disruptions. National energy security is also enhanced by a greater variety of domestic energy sources.
In the United States and Canada, ensuring energy security for the next few decades at least will require that those countries continue to rely on their huge endowments of fossil fuels. For example, the World Energy Council estimates that the United States has around 30% of the world’s known coal resources, which is more than any other country. They also estimate that Canada has more than 70% of the world’s known bituminous oil, and the United States has more than 70% of the world’s known oil shale resources. While oil imports are currently an energy security issue for the United States, absent concern about CO2 emissions the United States and Canada could together produce, at costs competitive with the current price of crude oil, all the petroleum products they need until alternative energy technologies become competitive.
More generally, fossil fuels are essential for modern economic activity, and curtailing their use will reduce economic growth by raising the cost of energy. However, burning them adds CO2 to the atmosphere, and since CO2 is a greenhouse gas, this should raise global surface temperatures and may trigger other harmful changes in climates. Although there is much uncertainty about the character, size and geographic distribution of these effects, it has been asserted that significant and immediate reductions in fossil fuel combustion are needed to avoid significantly harmful climate change. However, limiting CO2 emissions is not the only possible policy response.
