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Article Excerpt
Although it is widely recognized that today's multiple energy challenges need to be tackled through internationally coordinated action, global energy governance has remained largely underdeveloped. Since the 2005 Gleneagles summit, however, the G8 has issued several ambitious energy action plans and declarations. Through its language and actions the G8 appears to claim a "leadership" role to fill the void in global energy governance. This article critically examines the G8's actual value added in this field. It comes to a nuanced conclusion. Admittedly, the G8 has initiated several substantive processes. It has, for instance, revamped the International Energy Agency by further expanding its scope beyond merely monitoring oil markets, and it has played a critical role in setting up a new international organization in the field of energy efficiency. Yet, in general, the G8 has failed to exert global political leadership, mainly because of internal divergence, lack of compliance monitoring, and nonmembership of major countries. Keywords: G8, global energy governance, great power concerts, International Energy Agency, energy security.
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The need for coordinated action to address the enormous energy challenges the world is facing has never been more pressing. Yet, there is no global organization in which states can devise and agree on joint solutions. In general, global energy governance has remained largely underdeveloped and fragmented. Since its 2005 summit in Gleneagles, however, the Group of Eight (G8) seems to have stepped to the fore to fill the void. Over the course of the past four years, it has issued several declarations that contain comprehensive policy frameworks with regard to energy. The G8 has also visibly invested in "outreach" toward emerging economies on a wide range of topics, including energy. The G8's new language and actions on energy suggest a willingness and capability to assume global responsibility and steer global governance, as it has done relatively successfully in other policy domains such as financial crisis management, debt relief, and health. (1) This course of action reminds one of the notion of a "major power concert," a group of important states that assumes responsibility for and leadership over the international system, based on a minimum set of common interests and values. (2) Thus far, however, no detailed studies have been published that assess the G8's role in the recent energy debate. (3) Therefore, the purpose of this article is to examine whether the G8 actually provides "leadership" in global energy governance; that is, whether it takes on responsibility to tackle global issues by coordinating domestic policies and guiding the rest of the international community. Our focus is not so much on what the G8 countries do individually, but on the G8 as a group and as a method.
The article is structured as follows. In the first section, we outline the new energy debate, the weak institutional response at the global level, and the G8's comparative advantage. In the second section, we give an overview of the G8's energy work thus far. In the third section we undertake a critical analysis of failure and success in the recent G8 performance on energy from the viewpoint of leadership. We conclude with an overall assessment. The research is mainly based on a qualitative analysis of official documents, complemented by fifteen semistructured interviews with Europe-based officials closely involved in the G8 process, whether as privileged participants or as close observers.
The New Energy Crisis and the Global Governance Response
The New Energy Debate
Not since the 1970s has energy figured so high on the international agenda. The new energy debate, however, is of a different nature than the one in the 1970s. It is characterized by a general recognition of the fundamental geophysical scarcity of fossil fuels, their catastrophic impact on climate and environment, and the accompanying social-economic and international-political stress. The recent reports of the International Energy Agency (IEA) serve as important wake-up calls in this regard. They urge world leaders to make the transition to a more efficient, lower-carbon energy system. (4) Otherwise, by 2030, global energy demand will increase by over 50 percent, with up to 80 percent of this demand met by fossil fuels (oil, coal, and gas). This is disquieting, to say the least, because it will lead to proportionate increases in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. The IEA projects that annual energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide will be 57 percent higher in 2030 than in 2005. Moreover, hydrocarbon-based energy consumption turns a blind eye to the fact that fossil fuels are exhaustible. (5) In light of all these worrying trends, Fatih Birol, the IEA's chief economist, cries out that "the energy path we are currently on is far from being sustainable." (6) The coming years, then, form a critical juncture in which the world will have to manage the huge global governance challenges that are related to the transition to a more sustainable energy economy.
The Fragmented Institutional Response
Despite these many severe energy challenges, there is no single venue for international discussion or action on energy issues. There is no "World Energy Organization." International energy governance is fragmented and dispersed into a patchwork of regionally or thematically nested, and sometimes overlapping, regimes and organizations. The IEA, founded in 1974 as a cooperation platform of Western energy-importing countries in the orbit of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), has a too limited mandate and membership to be the world's leading institution. It does not, for example, represent China, Russia, India, or Brazil. The International Energy Forum (IEF), an intercontinental dialogue forum established in 1991 that gathers energy ministers from more than sixty consumer and producer countries, looks promising, especially as the forum moves along the path of institutionalization with the establishment of a permanent secretariat in Riyadh in 2003. However, the IEF still lacks a firm structure and a clear mission statement. (7) The Energy Charter Treaty (ECT), in its turn, was supposed to translate World Trade Organization (WTO) rules for international energy trade and to develop into a full-blown dispute resolution forum for investment and transit issues. Nonetheless, the ECT process is somewhat stalled because the United States and Russia have abstained from ratifying the treaty. Finally, the newly founded International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) has a too specialized mandate to function as the embryo of a comprehensive global energy institution.
The United Nations has been notably absent in global energy governance, apart from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which plays a crucial role in the field of nuclear energy. To be sure, energy is included in the mandates of some twenty specialized UN bodies, such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Yet none is specialized in the energy issue per se. (8) Energy has also figured on the agendas of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) and the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) at Johannesburg in 2002, but these forums did not succeed in launching even a coordinated international program on energy. (9) In 2004, the Inter-Agency Task Force on Energy, which had formally existed since 1998, was institutionalized on a more permanent basis and renamed UN-Energy. Its purpose is to provide more coherence and coordination across the UN system. However, the agency has no budget or authority and has been nearly invisible since its inception. (10) Apart from some general reports, it has not produced substantial recommendations."
In the absence of a real global authority on energy, some organizations that were not designed to deal with energy as a distinct sector, such as the Bretton Woods Institutions and the WTO, have taken up some responsibilities in the energy field. The question remains, though, whether the rules of these institutions, which were...
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