Energy Security in Low-Carbon Pathways

The aim of this chapter is to provide a critical overview of the literature on the interactions between energy security and climate change policies. It principally focuses on how global scenarios produced by integrated assessment models (IAMs) and synthesised in the Working Group III of the fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report (AR5) assess this interaction. Given the deep transformation implied by the 2°C objective by 2050, IAMs are increasingly used to evaluate the co-benefits of climate policies, in particular in terms of energy security. This study, however, discusses the methodological flaws of these analyses including the weaknesses of many indicator-based assessments and the limits of IAMs to represent a broader set of determinants of emissions. These methodological challenges are crucial to assess multiobjective policies driven by the current shift in negotiation process which favours synergies between climate policies and other development objectives (poverty alleviation, employment, energy security, health, etc.).