ABSTRACT
I Introduction Before the world economy was hit by the financial crisis the fuel prices and the prices for other commodities had increased rapidly. This fact together with the threat of global warming led to a renewed interest in sustainable development in the public and in the media. In parallel, the European Union has committed itself not only to promote sustainable development in Europe but to play a pioneering role in the worldwide efforts to combat climate change and to foster sustainable development. The use of energy from renewable sources plays a pivotal role in every sustainability strategy for it is an effective way to counteract several problems at the same time: climate change, shortages of non-renewable resources, the high volatility of world energy prices, the dependency on commodities from politically unstable regions, and welfare losses to these countries. An alternative, or better, a supplement to the promotion of the use of renewables is the increase in energy efficiency. A reduction of energy consumption via an increase in energy efficiency seems to be an especially attractive strategy of sustainable development for it may avoid disadvantages possibly linked to the use of renewables. Disadvantages of renewables may be due to adverse side effects like rival uses, use of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers when growing feedstock, etc. We will return to this issue later when discussing one example of renewable energy. This introductory chapter is organized as follows. In Section II, we will introduce and discuss several aspects of sustainability and sustainable energy. Section III deals with the EU Sustainable Development Strategy and the development of some of the Sustainable Development Indicators relevant to the theme ‘sustainable energy’. In Section IV, we investigate the chances and limits of renewable energy by discussing the example of biomass-to-liquids. The final section of this chapter will provide some conclusions and an overview of the rest of this volume.
