Energy Structures and Environmental Futures

This book examines the history and prospects of the European energy sector for the last twenty-five and the next twenty-five years. The energy sector in Europe is faced with two challenges. On the one hand, economic integration and internationalization of markets, on the other the risks posed by climate change and the likelihood of further demands by consumers and governments to restructure the sector in line with a more environmentalist agenda. The authors' analysis is rooted in a careful examination of the factors that have shaped energy in Europa over the last twenty-five years, its regulatory systems, its corporate structure, and the role of energy and environmental policies. The book then examines how these might or might not be transformed in the light of intensified and accelerated economic and political integration in Europe or if the sector is faced with sustained pressure to restructure from the environmental lobby.
The authors conclude that whatever major changes may be in the offing in the early twenty-first century, they will have to work through the structures of the twentieth century which are not going to yield easily either to economic internationalization or political environmentalism.