Introduction

Energy policy is one of the most important issues facing the world today. This can be easily explained by looking at three dramatic changes taking place on our planet: first, the explosion of human population – in the last century, world population has more than tripled from approximately 1.7 billion people in 1900 to more than 6 billion people in 2000. ¹ Even more impressive has been the increase in the pace of population growth. World population has grown from 3.5 billion people at the beginning of the 1970s to 6.5 billion people in 2005. In just 35 years, world population increased by more than 3 billion people – a quantity more than the growth in the previous 35 thousand years! Second, the dramatic economic growth that took place in the last century, leading to the process of globalization of the economy. As remarked by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, ² technological progress has been able to handle pretty well this dramatic increase in the size of human societies:

Since 1960, while population doubled and economic activity increased 6-fold, food production increased 2½ times, food price declined, water use doubled, wood harvest for pulp tripled and hydropower doubled. ³

And third, an increasing stress on the environment and natural resources, which has been generated by the simultaneous skyrocketing of both population and affluence. Again quoting the findings of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment:

Over the past 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history. This has resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life on Earth. ⁴

In considering the combined effects of these changes, it is clear that the economic problem associated with the need of satisfying the rapidly increasing demand for energy while respecting the environment is more and more becoming a mission impossible. In fact, if we admit that increased consumption of natural resources associated with an increasing consumption of energy, specifically fossil fuels, is required to produce and consume more goods and services per capita for more people, then we have also to admit that, sooner or later, economic growth will have to face the unavoidable existence of biophysical constraints. As Daly has stated, economic growth nowadays is taking place in a ‘full world’ (Daly, 1996).