Sustainable Energy transitions and the Economic Globalization

The deepening of world economic globalization has contributed to a sizeable boost of emerging countries' economies over the last decade and, consequently, to increasing tensions on oil markets. It has also lead to increasing emissions of CO2 in the atmosphere contributing to global warming. Post 2012 climate policies will thus insert themselves in a context where tensions on oil markets constitute a key challenge. But a number of another dimensions additionally complicates this background such as the current financial crisis, poverty alleviation, energy and food security, health and local environmental protection. They equally need to be addressed as they will directly impact transition pathways towards a low carbon society and fundamental change in institutions, technologies, social behaviors and infrastructures required. Hence, we will seek to the synergies (win-win strategies) between the intertwined issues of energy security and environmental safety (combat against climate change) likely to deliver sustainable transition pathways. In order to achieve that, we provide quantitative assessment of those different aspects of global sustainability under different visions of the globalization process in terms of governance (coordinated vs. fragmented), trade and capital flows, technical progress (diffusion of efficiency and productivity gains) and the geopolitical context (which conditions the climate negotiations and the strategic behavior of oil producers). This is done in particular by embarking explicitly the long-term drivers of oil markets into the general equilibrium model IMACLIM-R, which is designed to capture the interdependencies between the energy sector and the macroeconomic context. The analysis is structured around a set of scenarios based on contrasted assumptions on the drivers of baseline and policy scenarios reflecting various sets of sustainability goals and alternative views of the globalization process on the dimensions listed above