What Role for Renewable Energy in International Law?

Promotion of renewable energies is crucial to achieving the reduction targets and climate change mitigation aimed by the international law. At the global level, the year 2012 has been proclaimed by the United Nations as the International Year of Sustainable Energy (Res. 65/151). This is a valuable opportunity for public awareness regarding sustainable energy, energy efficiency and renewable energy. At the European Union, while linked to climate change strategy, the environmental dimension is now also covered by the EU energy policy, thanks to the Treaty of Lisbon. Therefore, the relevance of renewable energy sources will increase over the next few years at the EU primary law as well as the EU secondary law. Its role on related issues as food security, human rights, land tenure, international security, etc., will increase significantly. However, such a trend is not free of discussion. Let’s take the wind energy as an example: it results in substantial environmental and economic benefits, but the operation of onshore and offshore wind facilities may also result in environmental or social negative impacts. This paper seeks to analyze how the promotion of international legal instruments and policy can enhance the development of renewable energy. The paper will use a twofold approach. Firstly, it will focus on the analysis of to what extent renewable energy, which plays such a crucial role for sustainable development, is in need of a legal global international framework to support and to ensure its efficiency (for wind, water, solar and bioenergy). Such a framework is expected to be specially relevant within the European Union. Secondly, it will show how promoting renewable energy not only serves to deal with climate change or to secure energy supplies but it is also a valuable tool to manage some international security’s challenges. To that end, the paper will use a case study focused in the Central Asia States linked to the water-energy nexus. The methodological approach includes legal analysis of international tools and academic literature, and regional case study. Legal analysis has an important role in order to research, in the specific field of renewable energy, consistencies in the international legal regime. Case study seems to be particularly useful in this area of research in order to provide updates on output and political initiatives