7 - Legal Frameworks for Energy for Sustainable Development

Summary

Traditional energy production, dependent largely on the burning of biomass in rural areas and the burning of fossil fuels in industrialized areas, poses threats of economic, environmental, and social hardship for the world through global warming and for developing countries through exhaustion on energy-related imports of hard currency resources that are desperately needed for education, sanitation, health care, and other vital human needs.

There are proven cleaner and more affordable alternatives, including ways to use fossil fuel resources much more efficiently. Many of them are analyzed in The World Energy Assessment (WEA), sponsored by the UN Development Program (UNDP), the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), and the World Energy Council (WEC). The WEA, http://www.undp.org/seed/eap/activities/wea/, is an invaluable tool for countries to apply to resolve their energy challenges and resultant energy-related economic and environmental problems.

To effectuate these alternatives, legal structures to promote them are indispensable. Much attention has been given to new energy technologies and the means of technology transfer and capacity building. Very little attention has been given to the legal frameworks essential to their implementation. This chapter addresses these legal frameworks.

GENERAL MEASURES

Subsidy removal

Among the legal measures to promote energy for sustainable development, by far the most significant is legislation to remove fossil fuel and nuclear subsidies. Subsidy removal not only is a costless measure, but by definition, it is a certain revenue enhancing one.