Energy security in Europe. Divergent perceptions and policy challenges

Summary:

This edited collection highlights the different meanings that have been attached to the notion of energy security and how it is taken to refer to different objects. Official policy definitions of energy security are broadly similar across countries and emphasize the reliability and affordability of access to sufficient energy resources for a community to uphold its normal economic and social functions. However, perceptions of energy security vary between states causing different actions to be taken, both in international relations and in domestic politics.

This book moves the policy debates on energy security beyond a consideration of its seemingly objective nature. It also provides a series of contributions that shed light on the conditions under which similar material factors are met with very different energy security policies and divergent discourses across Europe. Furthermore, it problematizes established notions prevalent in energy security studies, such as whether energy security is ‘geopolitical’, and an element of high politics, or purely ‘economic’, and should be left for the markets to regulate.

The book will be of particular relevance to students and academics in the fields of energy studies and political science seeking to understand the divergence in perspectives and understandings of energy security challenges between EU member states and in multilateral relationships between the EU as a whole.

Table of contents:

1. The multiple faces of energy security: an introduction - Kacper Szulecki

Part I: Internal EU dynamics of energy securitisation: divergent perceptions

2. Energy securitisation: applying the Copenhagen School’s framework to energy - Andreas Heinrich and Kacper Szulecki

3. Securitisation in the gas sector: energy security debates concerning the example of the Nord Stream Pipeline - Andreas Heinrich

4. Politics and knowledge production: between securitisation and riskification of the shale gas issue in Poland and Germany - Aleksandra Lis

5. Energy security and energy transition: securitisation in the electricity sector - Kacper and Julia Kusznir

6. Energy securitisation: avenues for future research - Andrew Judge, Tomas Maltby and Kacper Szulecki

Part II: Europe's external policy challenges: critical perspectives on energy security

7. Taking security seriously in EU energy governance: Crimean shock and the Energy Union - Kacper Szulecki and Kirsten Westphal

8. Unpacking the nexus between market liberalisation and desecuritisation in energy - Irina Kustova

9. EU gas supply security: the power of the importer - Jakub M. Godzimirski and Zuzanna Nowak

10. Identities and vulnerabilities: the Ukraine Crisis and the securitisation of the EU-Russia gas trade - Marco Siddi

11. Positive and negative security: a consequentialist approach to EU gas supply - Paulina Landry

12. The global oil market and EU energy security - Dag Harald Claes