This chapter discusses restrictions on the import of Russian oil and natural gas into the U.S. and Europe. The chapter also situates this discussion in the context of European dependence on Russian energy supplies and resulting difficulties in enacting energy-related sanctions and trade restrictions. It discusses how a price cap was implemented in order to make energy-related sanctions placed on Russia more effective. Finally, it considers how policymakers are attempting to balance current energy needs with longer-term goals like reducing dependence on Russian energy supplies and building towards a more sustainable future.

The Trump administration inflicted long-term damages on America’s health, economy and environment. But America can still reset its path toward an energy transition that shares benefits with local communities hosting renewable energy projects and that supports the economic diversification of communities reliant on oil and gas extraction. The Biden administration reorientated federal agencies’ actions under existing laws to support the clean energy transition. These actions – strengthening environmental regulations, requiring mandatory corporate disclosure on climate risks and aligning federal leasing of public lands and seas and permitting-processes to value conservation and climate mitigation – can help incentivize investment flows into renewable energy and low-carbon economic activities. Ambitious federal investments into clean energy infrastructure and assistance to oil- and gas-reliant communities requires legislative actions. With Republicans who support both economic progress and environment and climate protection no longer a strong voice in Congress, the budget reconciliation process may well be the unique avenue for Democrats to enact legislation on public investments to accelerate the energy transition. The voices of younger Republicans who favor climate protection, alongside those of their Democrat counterparts, offer some hope that Congress will be forced to return to bipartisan stewardship of America’s air, water, lands and seas.

This chapter examines the making of a new sphere for clean energy governance, and takes an intertemporal perspective to identify three distinct stages in its politics. The first stage occurred through transnational network-based initiatives in the 1990s and early 2000s. The second period marked a shift in interest and consensus among powerful actors, resulting in the creation of a new international hierarchy dedicated to renewable energy by the end of 2010. The third stage marked the articulation of norms through the Clean Energy for All framework and the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goal 7 on Affordable and Clean Energy. These policy moves demarcated and institutionalized a new, layered, and evolving sphere of governance of networks, hierarchies, and hybrid arrangements. The analysis illuminates how networks linking different governance modalities capture the growing interdependence across issue areas and actors. It also provides evidence of tendencies of hybridization and layering of modes of governances, as networks often engage markets, rely on state agencies for resources, and create pathways to new intergovernmental or hybrid structures. The analysis shows that the pluralization of agency has shaped the networks and market-based mechanisms that gave rise to the sphere of clean energy governance.

The purpose of this chapter is threefold: (1) It explains energy as a concept that has transformed over the years and explains the difference between primary, secondary, renewable and non-renewable energy resources. In so doing, it refers to UN Statistics Division/International Energy Agency sources. (2) It explains how the rules of international trade law are relevant to the energy sector and when these rules become applicable to trade in energy; and (3) It explores the major changes energy markets have undergone in recent decades, focusing on decarbonization, decentralization and energy security.

As unusually strong Santa Ana winds whipped through California in fall 2019, the state’s utilities faced a bind: cut power for millions, or risk their transmission infrastructure sparking another devastating and deadly fire? In the end, both occurred, and California was alternately ablaze and in the dark throughout the fall. This impossible predicament was, many said, a harbinger of things to come: climate change exposing the precarity of seemingly advanced economies, as centuries of fossil fuel emissions reveal their bite.

As the modular backbone of the technological revolution, data centers are essential. As the infrastructure of the twenty-first century, data centers must align with the challenges of twenty-first-century infrastructure. While data centers are far less power hungry than distributed computing, the technology revolution in the making will choke without a satisfactory solution of clean energy for scaling data centers. Key innovations in predictive intelligence make a world of PUE ratios near one likely. But absolute power draw will continue to grow the footprint of data centers on local power networks and their carbon intensity. Two key factors to overcome the clean energy barrier of scaling data centers are energy optimization via on-site production and intelligent location siting. For humanity to thrive in the digital age, data center infrastructure much be efficient, decarbonized, and resource neutral at scale.

In this chapter, we discuss the evolution of the field of ‘ethics of nuclear energy’, regarding its past, present and future. We will first review the history of this field in the previous four decades, focusing on new and emerging challenges of nuclear energy production and waste disposal, in light of several important developments. Four of the most pressing ethical challenges will be further reviewed in the chapter. First, what is a morally ‘acceptable’ nuclear energy production method, if we consider the existing and possible new technologies? Second, provided a new tendency to consider nuclear waste disposal with several countries, what would be the new ethical and governance challenges of these multinational collaborations? Third, how should we deal with the (safety) challenges of the new geographic distribution of nuclear energy, tilting towards emerging economies with less experience with nuclear technology? Fourth, nuclear energy projects engender highly emotional controversies. Neither ignoring the emotions of the public nor taking them as a reason to prohibit or restrict a technology – we call them technocratic populist pitfalls respectively – seem to be able to guide responsible policy making.