Overview

Industrial factory emitting thick, dark smoke into the sky, creating heavy air pollution — Figure 3.1 Energy Infrastructure

Climate change is what turns renewable energy from a technical option into an ethical problem.

Modern energy systems have made possible extraordinary forms of mobility, production, communication, agriculture, health care, and economic development. At the same time, fossil-fuel energy systems have also become the major driver of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The ethical problem is more than just fossil fuels create pollution and add CO2. The deeper problem is that many of the benefits of fossil energy have been distributed unevenly, while many of the harms of climate change are inversely imposed unevenly across communities, regions, species, and generations.

Renewable energy is often presented as a solution to climate change. That is partly correct, but it is not sufficient. Renewable energy technologies do not exist outside of land use, mining, labor, infrastructure, finance, law, public policy, international development, and community life. A renewable energy transition can reduce greenhouse gas emissions while still creating new conflicts over land, water, minerals, jobs, energy prices, infrastructure, and political power.

For that reason, this lesson does not ask only whether renewable energy is necessary. It asks what kinds of obligations follow from climate change, who holds those obligations, and how renewable energy transitions should be evaluated ethically.

The central question for this lesson is:

Given the relationship between fossil energy, greenhouse gas emissions, and climate risk, what obligations do societies have to transform their dependent energy systems, and how should the burdens and benefits of that transformation be distributed (locally, regionally, globally)?

Why This Lesson Matters

Climate change is what supports renewable energy as an ethical urgency. If greenhouse gas emissions create serious and foreseeable harms, then reducing those emissions is more than just a technical challenge. It is also a challenge of responsibility, justice, risk, precaution, and intergenerational obligation.

Climate urgency does not make every renewable energy pathway automatically ethical. The fact that an energy technology is renewable does not answer all of the relevant ethical questions.

We still need to ask:

Who benefits from the transition?
Who pays for it?
Who is protected?
Who is displaced or made vulnerable?
Who has decision-making power?
Which communities are asked to accept new risks?
Which harms are reduced, and which harms are shifted elsewhere?
What obligations do present generations have to future generations?
What role should public policy play in accelerating, shaping, or limiting particular energy pathways?

This lesson prepares us for the case studies that follow. In Lesson 4, we will examine biofuels in detail. Biofuels are a useful next case because they show that renewable energy systems can still raise serious ethical issues involving land, food, water, labor, biodiversity, public policy, and social justice.

Lesson 3 establishes why energy transition matters. Lesson 4 begins the work of asking whether particular transition pathways are ethically defensible.

Lesson Objectives

By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:

Explain the relationship between fossil energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and climate change.
Describe why climate change creates ethical obligations related to energy systems.
Identify environmental, social, economic, and political arguments for renewable energy transitions.
Explain why renewable energy technologies can still create ethical challenges.
Distinguish between the need for energy transition and the ethical evaluation of specific transition pathways.
Apply Ethics Matrix B to identify broader social and environmental impacts of energy transition.
Use the Stakeholder Analysis Matrix to identify affected groups, powerful actors, vulnerable communities, and future or silent stakeholders.
Identify the top three to five ethical issues that should guide analysis of renewable energy and climate policy.

Key Concepts

This lesson will introduce or reinforce several important concepts:

greenhouse gas emissions
climate change
cumulative emissions
mitigation
adaptation
renewable energy
energy transition
net zero
carbon budgets
energy-system lock-in
precaution
intergenerational justice
distributive justice
procedural justice
energy justice
just transition
stakeholder analysis

What is due for Lesson 3?

This lesson will take us one week to complete. Please refer to the Course Syllabus for specific time frames and due dates. Specific directions for the assignment below can be found in this lesson.

Lesson 3: Assignments
Requirements	Assignment Details
To Do	Familiarize yourself with all the Lesson 3 Readings and assignments.
Read	Week 3: Chapter 1 from the latest IPCC report on renewable energy and climate change. (This is located in the Canvas folder.) IEA World Energy Model: Read, Overview, Stated Policies Scenario, and the Announced Pledges Scenario: (This is located in the Canvas folder.) The International Energy Agency's latest World Energy Outlook Read Chapter 2, Setting the Scene and Chapter 7 Net Zero Emissions by 2050 The readings for this lesson focus on the relationship between energy systems, climate change, and renewable energy transition. They include selections from current climate and energy assessment materials, including IPCC and International Energy Agency sources. As you read, focus on the ethical structure of the problem, not only the technical details. Ask: What are the major climate risks associated with continued fossil-fuel dependence? What role do energy systems play in creating or reducing those risks? What does it mean to describe renewable energy as necessary? Necessary for whom, and under what conditions? What obligations fall on governments, firms, researchers, communities, and energy users? What new ethical problems might emerge during the transition to renewable energy?
Assignment	Week 3: Using the Matrices in Lesson 3 This week, you will use Ethics Matrix B and the Stakeholder Analysis Matrix at the energy-system level. Do not use the matrices to evaluate one specific renewable energy technology yet. That will begin in Lesson 4. For this lesson, use the matrices to analyze the broader ethical structure of renewable energy transition under climate change. Ethics Matrix B Use Ethics Matrix B to identify the broader social and environmental impacts of energy transition. Pay particular attention to: public policy, social justice, transformations in economy and society, broader impacts, and risk and precaution. You do not need to treat every category as equally important. Your task is to identify which categories matter most and then select the top three to five ethical issues. Possible issues include: responsibility for historical and ongoing emissions, protection of vulnerable communities, energy affordability, fossil-fuel worker and community transition, public investment in renewable infrastructure, land use and siting conflicts, energy security, future generations, and the risks of delay. Stakeholder Analysis Matrix Use the Stakeholder Analysis Matrix to identify who is affected by energy transition and who has power over the transition. Possible stakeholders include: fossil-fuel workers, renewable-energy workers, utilities, low-income energy users, rural communities, Indigenous communities, frontline climate-vulnerable communities, policymakers, regulators, investors, energy-intensive industries, future generations, ecosystems, and countries with different levels of historical responsibility for emissions. As you work, distinguish among: primary stakeholders, who are directly affected; secondary stakeholders, who are indirectly affected; and key stakeholders, who have significant power to shape outcomes. A strong stakeholder analysis should notice mismatches between power and vulnerability. Some actors have great influence over energy systems while bearing relatively little climate risk. Other groups may face serious risks while having limited power over energy decisions.

Questions?

If you have any questions, please post them to our Questions? discussion forum (not email), located under the Discussions tab in Canvas. I will check that discussion forum daily to respond. While you are there, feel free to post your own responses if you, too, are able to help out a classmate.

ksc17 Tue, 04/18/2017 - 12:16