ABSTRACT
The introduction outlines the book’s empirical drive, theoretical aims, main concepts and methodology. It highlights that it is crucial to comprehend the divergent and often controversial energy policies of countries like Germany, Poland and Ukraine, as they are often a source of friction and hamper European and regional cooperation on key climate protection goals, sustainable energy solutions or continental pipeline projects. However, understanding the root causes of energy security reasoning behind the Nordstream project in Germany, slow development of sustainable energy policy in Poland or Ukraine’s maneuvering between Western and Eastern energy policy influences, requires going beyond the traditional focus on the state’s political elites and technocratic policymaking. This book addresses the challenge of complex energy security analysis by adopting an original contextual approach based on energy security logics that allows accounting for the wider historical, socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds from which energy policies emerge. In the process, it is illustrated that the national approaches to gas politics, nuclear energy and renewables in Europe are not only driven by the security logics of war, subsistence and risk identified in the literature, but increasingly also by the logic of emancipation. The latter accompanies the emerging phenomenon of energy democracy, as it drives bottom–up citizens’ energy initiatives and manifests in the rhetoric of liberation and local practices of energy production.
