energy, climate and the environment
Energy Security in Europe Divergent Perceptions and Policy Challenges edited by kacper szulecki
Energy, Climate and the Environment Series editor David Elliott The Open University Milton Keynes, UK
‘This book is unique since it is among the few that examine the ‘subjective’ aspects of energy security in a variety of places and societal contexts. The book is a ground-breaking work in that it scrutinizes how the concept of energy security is linked with vulnerabilities and how it is invoked by different stakeholders. The contribution of this rigorous book is twofold. First, on an academic level, it relates to all disciplines that seek to unpack how rhetoric, discourse and framing modes, around seeming threats, are constructed and mobilized around energy policy. Second, it relates to how policy makers and practitioners struggle to craft policy that is both politically feasible and economically and environmentally effective. In this respect, this volume provides hands-on case studies on how to mobilize support through securitization along with an analysis of the downside of such a framing mode.’ —Itay Fischhendler, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel ‘This book takes on a challenging task: questioning the mainstream consensus in European energy policy debates. It excels on all fronts. Bringing together an excellent group of scholars, this volume offers an inter-subjective approach to energy security—conceptually sharp, empirically rich and theoretically brilliant.’ —Andreas Goldthau, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK
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Aim of the Series The aim of this series is to provide texts which lay out the technical, environmental and political issues relating to proposed policies for responding to climate change. The focus is not primarily on the science of climate change, or on the technological detail, although there will be accounts of this, to aid assessment of the viability of various options. However, the main focus is the policy conflicts over which strategy to pursue. The series adopts a critical approach and attempts to identify flaws in emerging policies, propositions and assertions. In particular, it seeks to illuminate counter-intuitive assessments, conclusions and new perspectives. The intention is not simply to map the debates, but to explore their structure, their underlying assumptions and their limitations. The books in this series are incisive and authoritative sources of critical analysis and commentary, clearly indicating the divergent views that have emerged while also identifying the shortcomings of such views. The series does not simply provide an overview, but also offers policy prescriptions. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14966 ‘Energy securitization has always been a hard case for securitization theory. This book unlocks some of its most powerful paradoxes, in particular the relation between politics and security, the articulation of subjective and objective aspects of security, and the interaction between positive and negative securities. It is theoretically diverse, forward looking, and empirically well researched, with cases spanning a broad range of sectors that constitute energy security—from problems of extraction to market liberalization through ethical issues, known under the label of sustainability. The book will be of interest to those who study security, securitization, and energy politics/policies.’ —Thierry Balzacq, University of Namur, Belgium
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Kacper Szulecki Editor
Energy Security in Europe Divergent Perceptions and Policy Challenges
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Editor Kacper Szulecki Department of Political Science University of Oslo Oslo, Norway
Energy, Climate and the Environment ISBN 978-3-319-64963-4 ISBN 978-3-319-64964-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64964-1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017955565 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Anna Omelchenko / Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
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Foreword
How much and what kind of energy we extract, trade and use has a profound impact on security and sustainability in the twenty-first century. The global energy challenges range from connecting to the grid over a fifth of humankind who still live without electricity to replacing fossil fuels that currently provide over four-fifths of our energy with cleaner energy sources. While natural scientists, engineers and economists scramble to advise policymakers on the best way to solve these dilemmas, it falls on political scientists to explain why such advice is rarely followed. Unfortunately, few political scientists meet this challenge and go beyond the insights which emerged from the 1970s oil crises echoed in the gas conflicts during the early aughts. This book is an exception: it contains a fresh and novel look by a group of political scientists, most of them at the start of their careers, at one of the most intractable and fascinating energy problems: energy security. As a policy problem, energy security is surrounded by confusion defined by two extremes. On the one hand, there is a popular mantra that ‘energy security means different things to different people’. On the other hand, there are scholars who believe that energy security should be captured in universal esoteric and barely comprehensible indicators and formulae based exclusively on technical energy systems analysis. Both views hinder policy comparison and learning since they either deny that there v
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is anything to be compared or neglect the actual views of policy stakeholders who are supposed to benefit from this comparison and learning. In our work on the Global Energy Assessment and other interdisciplinary projects, we tried to forge a middle ground that would enable a rigorous analysis of energy security and, at the same time, explain observed variety of perspectives and priorities. In order to do that, we defined energy security as ‘low vulnerability of vital energy systems’. This approach has helped us to analyse security of diverse energy systems at different scales, in different polities and during different time periods. Though we primarily adhere to positivist energy systems analysis, we have always stressed that ‘vital systems’ and ‘vulnerabilities’ are not only objectively identified but also intersubjectively constructed. We have also challenged social scientists to explore the mechanisms of this construction. This book has boldly taken up this challenge by examining the ‘subjective’ aspects of energy security with unprecedented methodological and conceptual clarity. By connecting vital energy systems and their vulnerabilities with the concepts of ‘referent objects’ and ‘threats’ from the securitisation theory, it proposes a powerful analytical framework for understanding energy security politics. It contains rich and fascinating stories of energy debates in Poland and Germany which invoke the concept of energy security with respect to the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline (Chap. 3), shale gas (Chap. 4) and renewables, nuclear and the power sector (Chap. 5). The debate is expanded beyond these two countries to the EU as a whole in Chaps. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12. More important than the empirical case studies are conceptual advances in energy securitisation theory which can be applied beyond the particular sectors and countries described in the book. For example, the book makes a crucial distinction between energy security rhetoric and concrete policy proposals. It introduces the concept of ‘security jargon’ (Chap. 2) when threats are discussed without calls for concrete measures (see a particularly convincing illustration with respect to discussions of the Nord Stream gas pipeline in Poland in Chap. 3). This distinction is important for distinguishing political rhetoric and action important in all fields of energy policy, not just in energy security. The authors also note that policy proposals arising from securitising speech are rarely ‘extra-ordinary’,
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as presumed by mainstream securitisation theory. In fact, the book describes only one set of clearly extra-ordinary policy: regulating the construction of the first nuclear power plant in Poland (Chap. 5). This echoes our own observation that mobilisation of commitment and resources necessary for launching national nuclear programmes often requires the presence of real or imagined energy security threats. Beyond such outstanding cases, energy security considerations usually prompt only trivial and incremental policy action. The book also identifies unresolved problems and promising directions for further research (primarily in Chap. 6). One of these is a problem of causality: do securitising speech acts precede, follow or exist separately from change in policy and material circumstances? For example, it is a widespread view that the Nord Stream pipeline has improved Germany’s gas supply security and undermined Poland’s political position and economic revenues. How is this common-sense understanding improved by demonstrating that the pipeline is portrayed as more threatening by Polish policymakers than by their German counterparts (Chap. 3)? The book makes it clear that a useful theory of energy securitisation should move beyond examining isolated political speech acts by bringing in analysis of material contexts, sociological networks and power relations. It would be interesting to see the application of the energy securitisation theory beyond political rhetoric, for example, to discourses of technocratic elites who engage with more nuanced and sophisticated realities of energy systems than superficially understood geopolitics. Finally, the book touches upon a fascinating subject of the boundary between energy security and other energy policies. It demonstrates that securitising speech often crosses this boundary casting technological modernisation, mitigation of global climate change, employment, and competitiveness in terms of threats and vulnerabilities. Chapter 11 proposes that some of these energy policy objectives can be viewed as ‘positive security’. The question is whether such policies can still be effectively analysed within the securitisation framework or whether, instead, the framework should be modified or complemented by other theoretical and analytical tools. While solving this puzzle is outside the scope of the book, it provides an invaluable foundation for answering and even asking
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such questions. On the whole, it is a must-read for serious social scholars interested in the new science of energy security. Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
Aleh Cherp
Energy Program International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria
Jessica Jewell
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Acknowledgements
This book grows out of the international research project ‘Towards a common European energy policy? Energy security debates in Poland and Germany’. The project—and in consequence, the book, could not have come about without the organisational skills, inspirational powers and motivation of Heiko Pleines, to whom the editor and many among the authors are greatly indebted. He has been a great host of the project workshops held in 2014 and 2015 at the welcoming Research Centre for East European Studies (FSO) at the University of Bremen. The theoretical framework has also benefited from the input by Karen Smith Stegen. I also thank Jan Osička for his last-minute comments on the introductory chapter. The second part of the book builds, in turn, on the international conference ‘Towards a common European energy policy? Perceptions of energy security’, organised in May 2016 as a climax of the aforementioned research project, but also helping us to cast our net widely in search for fellow energy security buffs. There, the project team benefitted greatly from the hospitality of Michal Buchowski and the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Adam Mickiewicz University (AMU) in Poznan, and had some fantastic exchanges with all the participants. A number of people have been involved in the data-gathering process. German media reports were selected and coded by Thomas Sattich at ix
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FSO Bremen, and the Polish media were combed by Agata Stasik at AMU Poznan. Agnieszka Cyfka, Karol Dobosz, Philip Fritz, Bartosz Gruszka Barbara Holli, Katharina Remshardt and Agnieszka Strzemeska have assisted in the empirical research, while the literature review in the introductory chapter has greatly benefitted from the query conducted by Dennis Palij Bråten. I would also like to thank all the language editors involved in making this book reasonably readable: Brien Barnett, Lorna Judge, Matthew Landry, Mathew Little, James Longbotham and Michael Marcoux. All the unnecessary jargon and Proustian sentences remaining after their editing efforts are solely our fault. Finally, I want to thank the founding agencies which made the research and this publication possible. The German Polish Science Foundation’s grant Nr. 2014–15 which enabled the massive data gathering and financed the Poznan conference, as well as the Oslo University’s energy research unit UiO:Energi, which helped in financing the language editing of this book. I would also like to thank the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies in Florence for hosting me during a large part of the book’s finalisation and again acknowledge UiO:Energi’s generosity in making that stay possible. Last but not least, I would also like to thank my wife Julia and our two sons for their support and understanding for my extended office hours and work from home in the final phases of the editing process. Kacper Szulecki
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Contents
1 The Multiple Faces of Energy Security: An Introduction 1 Kacper Szulecki
Part I Internal EU Dynamics of Energy Securitisation: Divergent Perceptions
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2 Energy Securitisation: Applying the Copenhagen School’s Framework to Energy 33 Andreas Heinrich and Kacper Szulecki 3 Securitisation in the Gas Sector: Energy Security Debates Concerning the Example of the Nord Stream Pipeline 61 Andreas Heinrich 4 Politics and Knowledge Production: Between Securitisation and Riskification of the Shale Gas Issue in Poland and Germany 93 Aleksandra Lis xi
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5 Energy Security and Energy Transition: Securitisation in the Electricity Sector 117 Kacper Szulecki and Julia Kusznir 6 Energy Securitisation: Avenues for Future Research 149 Andrew Judge, Tomas Maltby, and Kacper Szulecki Part II Europe’s External Policy Challenges: Critical Perspectives on Energy Security
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7 Taking Security Seriously in EU Energy Governance: Crimean Shock and the Energy Union 177 Kacper Szulecki and Kirsten Westphal 8 Unpacking the Nexus Between Market Liberalisation and Desecuritisation in Energy 203 Irina Kustova 9 EU Gas Supply Security: The Power of the Importer 221 Jakub M. Godzimirski and Zuzanna Nowak 10 Identities and Vulnerabilities: The Ukraine Crisis and the Securitisation of the EU-Russia Gas Trade 251 Marco Siddi 11 Positive and Negative Security: A Consequentialist Approach to EU Gas Supply 275 Paulina Landry 12 The Global Oil Market and EU Energy Security 311 Dag Harald Claes Conclusion 333 Kacper Szulecki Index 339
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List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 Fig. 8.1 Fig. 11.1 Fig. 12.1 Fig. 12.2 Fig. 12.3
The “pendulum” of (de-)securitisation and (de-)politicisation in energy policy Domestic/international liberalisation and (de)securitisation: a typology The EU gas security strategy European and US oil consumption, 1925–2015, million barrels per day (mbd) European and US oil production as share of consumption (%) Origin of EU-28 crude oil imports (%)
44 206 285 314 315 324
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List of Tables
Table 2.1 Table 3.1
Grammars of security Counter-measures proposed in Poland with a positive or neutral attitude (number of documents and ratio) Table 3.2 Counter-measures proposed in Germany with a positive or neutral attitude (number of documents and ratio) Table 3.3 Documents sorted by theoretical concept Table 3.4 Perceived risks/threats linked to the Nord Stream pipeline by source (number of documents) Table 3.5 Proposed counter-measures in Poland and Germany with a positive or neutral attitude (number of documents and ratio) Table 5.1 Comparing objective systemic context, threats discussed and referent objects across the two cases and sub-sectors (own elaboration, with input from Aleh Cherp) Table 9.1 External suppliers of energy to the EU—shares of EU import in per cent (official EU data for 2014) Table 9.2 EU gas production, consumption, and import—recent dynamics (European Commission 2016, p. 9) Table 9.3 External sources of gas supply to the EU between 2004 and 2014 (in per cent of import—EU official data) Table 11.1 Negative and positive security
51 71 78 79 80 86 141 223 225 226 284
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