The sociotechnical systems behind energy provision and climate change are so materially intensive and expensive, it might be easy to consider infrastructure and investment as the two most salient aspects of any energy transition or accelerating low-carbon transitions towards decarbonization.

For example, humanity uses roughly 550 exajoules (ej) of energy per year, an amount ten times greater than the amount it used in 1900.¹ The systems of supply and provision behind this massive increase in energy consumption can be astoundingly complicated. To give just three examples, the shale gas wells being exploited by ExxonMobil are as long as ten Empire State Buildings. The United States has more commercial electricity suppliers and utilities than Burger King restaurants. The world boasts 11.1 million miles of paved roads to service its more than one billion passenger cars – enough to drive to the moon and back 46 times.²

Bolstering these features of modern energy production, delivery and use requires monumental amounts of finance and investment. The International Renewable Energy Agency (irena) recently estimated that a future, decarbonized global energy sector would require at least $110 trillion of investment between now and 2050.³ Post-2050 carbon abatement options could be even more expensive. As one example, the deploying enhanced weathering to reduce global temperatures by a few degrees could cost $60–600 trillion for mining, grinding, and transporting rock, with further similar costs for distributing it.⁴

Notwithstanding these alarming projections, the energy and climate conundrum is not only a techno-economic affair. It is also an intimately social, behavioural, ethical, and potently political affair. This is because it involves complex and unpredictable patterns of social practice; excessive waste; the creation of unique burdens; and an extremely long list of winners and losers.

Therefore, as we enter one of the most extreme challenges of this century – how to accelerate decarbonization without accelerating injustice and eroding democratic ideals – it is critically important we are guided by independent, thoughtful academic research. Legal research is especially important because law, regulation, and government, in the famous words of the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, enable society to set constraints on nefarious action and ensure that our lives are not “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” For it is energy law that often (among other dimensions) stipulates and enforces progressive climate targets, protects international sovereignty over natural resources, ensures affordable household tariffs, and holds industries accountable for pollution.⁵⁶⁷

It is with this in mind that I am delighted to support the publication of Sustainable Energy Democracy and the Law. Drawing from an incredibly diverse array of experts, the book explores what energy democracy and sustainability mean legally and in the context of the law. The volume examines what community energy and sustainability mean for consumers, citizens, prosumers, and even circular economy principles or global trade rules. The volume investigates democratic aspects of energy transitions including community benefits agreements, indigenous values, and rural communities. The volume ties all of these together with practical lessons for the practitioner and scholar alike.

In sum, all of the chapters in this exciting collection articulate a better way forward via energy options that are more equitable, sustainable, and reflective, guided by legal principles. I am reminded how Thomas Jefferson once wrote that “the execution of the laws is more important than the making of them.” This book offers the rare chance to guide that execution of law for decades to come.

Benjamin K. Sovacool

London

February 2, 2021