ABSTRACT
We are suffering from global energy problems; climate change, nuclear power, peak oil, air pollution and so on are threatening the sustainability of global ecosystems and economic systems not to mention the survival of the human race itself. How can we survive such global energy risks? If we are ever to reconstruct an ecologically sustainable and socially just society worldwide, we must tackle the issue of energy transition. Energy transition can be defined as the structural change of energy production and consumption systems from an industrial paradigm with an energy system dependent on nature-exploitive energy sources to an ecological paradigm of an energy system making use of diversified, diffusive, and participatory energy sources. If the symbols of the industrial paradigm have been fossil fuel and nuclear energy, those of the ecological paradigm are solar and wind power.
