Who governs energy? The challenges facing global energy governance

By Ann Florini, Benjamin Sovacool. 2009

270 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This article conceptualizes the energy problems facing society from a global governance perspective. It argues that a notion of "global energy governance," taken to mean international collective action efforts undertaken to manage and distribute energy resources and provide energy services, offers a meaningful and useful framework for assessing energy-related challenges. The article begins by exploring the concepts of governance, global governance, and global energy governance. It then examines some of the existing institutions in place to establish and carry out rules and norms governing global energy problems and describes the range of institutional design options available to policymakers. It briefly traces the role of a selection of these institutions, from inter-governmental organizations to summit processes to multilateral development banks to global action networks, in responding to energy issues, and points out their strengths and weaknesses. The article concludes by analyzing how the various approaches to global governance differ in their applicability to addressing the conundrums of global energy problems.

Subfields: Development, General Energy, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4fd4d63e644f858fe0717196c3de97604ea34e71

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Development

1. P. Newell
2. Benjamin Sovacool

In General Energy

1. P. Newell
2. J. Jewell
3. A. Cherp
4. Dustin Mulvaney
5. Benjamin Sovacool
6. Vlado Vivoda
7. Jon Phillips
8. J. Barry

In Pollution

1. P. Newell
2. Benjamin Sovacool
3. J. Jewell
4. A. Goldthau
5. A. Cherp
6. Dustin Mulvaney
7. S. Hall
8. Mark Davis

Citations in the corpus

• The three perspectives on energy security: intellectual history, disciplinary roots and the potential for integration (2011, background): “The other school focuses on institutions and regimes of global governance (including international markets) as well as on non-state actors and arrangements rather than on the balance of power of various national actors [22–25].”
• Politicizing energy justice and energy system transitions: Fossil fuel divestment and a “just transition” (2017, unknown): “6 such as food and transportation (Gagnon et al., 2002; Florini and Sovacool, 2009; Goldthau and Sovacool, 2012; Walker and Day, 2012; McCauley et al., 2013; Heffron and McCauley, 2014; Sovacool et al., 2017).”
• Trasformismo or transformation? The global political economy of energy transitions (2018, background): “Indeed, this scholarship demonstrates that global energy governance has traditionally been very weak (Florini & Sovacool, 2009; Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen, 2010).”
• What is prosumerism for? Exploring the normative dimensions of decentralised energy transitions (2020, background): “Energy research in the social sciences is replete with studies of global [41], multi-level [42] and polycentric energy governance [40].”
• The uniqueness of the energy security, justice, and governance problem☆ (2012, background): “This incoherence is reflected and amplified at the international level, where authority is fragmented and often altogether lacking (Newell, 2011; Cherp et al., 2011; Florini and Sovacool, 2009).”
• The political economy of the ‘just transition’ (2013, background): “…bodies, resulting in the weakness and underdevelopment of institutions of global or even regional energy governance: arenas in which key priorities might be set and pursued, conflicts identified and mediated, and issues of injustice evaluated and resolved (Florini and Sovacool 2009; McGowan 2009).”