Climate and Energy Security

Surprising and instructive differences are evident in the way policymakers in East Asia and Western Europe have responded to seemingly similar challenges of climate change and energy security. At the most general level, the approach of East Asia’s major powers to energy security in particular has been described as ‘neo-mercantilist’ and driven by national policies that don’t encourage transnational levels of cooperation. In Europe, by contrast, a more effective institutional infrastructure, coupled with an increasingly activist civil society, has meant that the EU has been at the forefront of global policy innovation. The contrast with Asia is equally noteworthy in the area of energy policy, where geopolitics and relations with Russia in particular have made coordination and security more elusive, with strongly diverging visions, aims and objectives of (energy) security among EU member states. The chapter concludes both by highlighting the differences and by identifying the potential for cooperation in this area between the EU and Asian partners