ABSTRACT
The RIIA workshop on Sustainable Development and the Energy Industries brought together a wide range of perspectives on energy and environmental issues. This chapter aims to summarize and organize some of the important themes raised by the presentations at the workshop, and others brought out in the discussion. Discussion centred on how environmental legislation would impinge and had impinged on the energy industries within a context of industries and government aiming for a sustainable energy policy. Energy industries will have a role as providers of information: when customers are involved in the equation, information is important. Consumers, non-governmental organizations, industry and government have all become active in the field of environmental legislation. All have an interest in the route taken by development, and the legislation that pertains to such development. Obstacles to change include responding to and working with uncertainties, defensive, negative players, and some groups' perceptions that they have been pushed outside the decisionmaking process.
