CAN RENEWABLE ENERGY SYSTEMS CAUSE CONFLICT?

Solar power in Afghanistan (“Chorah in Urozgan Province of Afghanistan” by 1st Lt. Daniel Riley (U.S. Armed Forces) – image released by the United States Air Force with the ID 111004-F-R5929-001. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

Fossil energy systems can certainly lead to conflict; a situation that the world has unfortunately witnessed too frequently in recent decades. But what about renewable energy systems? Could these lead to conflict too?

The literature on energy conflicts mainly addresses non-renewable resources such as oil and natural gas. This is no great surprise, as fossil fuels currently occupy a substantially larger share of the global energy mix. However, with climate change mitigation policies favouring renewable energy and efficiency improvements, this situation is likely to change.

Why does energy cause conflict?

André Månsson from Lund University in Sweden has researched this subject and focused on three sources of potential conflict:

• First, when the energy system is an objective in the conflict. This group includes geopolitically and economically motivated conflicts in which the conflicting parties have diverging opinions on who should access energy resources and/or control the energy system.
• Second, when the energy system is a means that is used in a conflict. For example, the energy could be used as a weapon, or an intentional attack on the energy system could be used to harm or threaten an actor.
• Third, when the energy system is the cause of conflict or catalyses its outbreak. Examples here are local abundance of resources being used to fund rebels in civil wars; environmental degradation from the production and use of energy exacerbating ecological conflicts; and increased food and energy costs giving rise to social instability and riots.

Solar power in Afghanistan (“Chorah in Urozgan Province of Afghanistan” by 1st Lt. Daniel Riley (U.S. Armed Forces) – image released by the United States Air Force with the ID 111004-F-R5929-001. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

His study used a conceptual framework to analyse whether and how an expansion of renewable energy can result in structural changes in energy systems that affect the risk of conflict. Basically the framework looks at characteristics of the entire socio-technical energy system, from primary resource to final energy use, which when interacting with a particular context can alter the risk of conflict.

A few interesting observations

Previous studies have claimed that the risk of conflict can increase if the geographical distribution of the resource is asymmetrical. Basically this means that conflict could more easily arise when a particular energy resource is abundant locally but scarce globally. Local abundance can incite violent competition for resources. The opposite situation – local scarcity of energy resources – could increase the risk of ecological conflict.

In addition, extraction of resources provides a stream of revenue and excess profits in places of local resource abundance. Countries that have an abundance of resources can develop less diversified economies, since revenues from export of resources increase the currency exchange rate and make other sectors less competitive.

The utilisation of energy resources can also degrade the natural environment and displace local communities as their livelihood is negatively affected. This can impose stress on societies and act as a threat multiplier or conflict catalyst.

A more diverse international energy market with a higher number of exporters is likely to be more difficult to control and less attractive as a conflict objective. Access to such functioning markets also reduces the incentive to use force to secure upstream supply of energy.

Attack feasibility has historically been associated with single components that have a high energy density such as pipelines and electricity transmission grids with concentrated energy flows. Transmission grids can also enable failures to cascade and amplify, since their components are interdependent and the grid must be balanced at all times. Distributed generation is, therefore, less sensitive than a centralised system.

The transport and military sectors have a high dependence on oil products, which contributes to the perception of oil as a strategic resource. A higher flexibility of demand reduces incentives to secure access to energy and can reduce the risk of resource conflicts since certain energy carriers become less strategic.

The affordability of energy – particularly transport fuels – can trigger social unrest in developing countries. High energy prices tend to affect food prices, which can affect food security – an issue that has been linked to violent food riots in certain societies.

Summary of findings

Månsson differentiated four stages in the supply chain (primary resources, international trade, conversion & distribution, and end use) and two broad types of renewable energy systems (bioenergy & biofuels, and renewable electricity generated by wind, hydro and solar PV).

Primary resources:

• Bioenergy & biofuels – More likely to interact with local conflicts (social instability) than interstate conflicts, because resources have low power density and are geographically widespread, but have large land requirements and low entry barriers for production.
• Renewable electricity – Low risks of interstate and intrastate conflict, since resources are abundant and geographically widespread and there are entry barriers to production that restrict opportunities for belligerents. An exception is hydropower which can increase tension between local actors and states.

International trade:

• Bioenergy & biofuels – Low risk of conflict, since the number of exporters is assumed to be high in a decarbonised future.
• Renewable electricity – More likely to incentivise interstate collaboration than conflicts, since mutual benefits can be achieved from increased (regional) trade and interdependence.

Conversion and distribution:

• Bioenergy & biofuels – Similar risk as current systems for liquid fossil fuels, since the system has similar structure (e.g. energy density of bottlenecks).
• Renewable electricity – Small-scale systems have a very low risk of being attacked (i.e. used as a conflict means). Large-scale systems that utilise control systems are exposed to virtual attacks from hostile states. The risk of physical attacks is similar as for fossil systems.

End use:

• Bioenergy & biofuels – The interaction is uncertain and depends on which energy end-use technologies are implemented (which affect flexibility of demand). Ancillary sustainability policies (e.g. increased energy intensity, fuel and modal shift) reduce the risk.
• Renewable electricity – Same as bioenergy & biofuels.

Conclusions

The 20th century witnessed both the rise of the fossil fuel era and interstate conflicts motivated by competition for access and control of these resources. If the 21st century turns out to be the ‘century for renewables’ this study suggests that we can anticipate a different set of energy conflicts.

The risk of violent interstate conflict will be lower, but large-scale utilisation of renewable energy resources could increase the risk of local instability in societies that have insufficient institutional capacity and where the livelihood of the various actors is negatively affected.

The geopolitical and economic incentive for states to engage in interstate conflicts for access and control of renewable energy is low, since renewable resources have a relatively low strategic value because of their physical properties (i.e. geographical distribution, low power density, energy flows rather than stocks that are difficult to accumulate and control over space and time).

Systems that are diversified and/or flexible (e.g. can switch between different resources and energy carriers) are less likely to cause conflict.

The incentive to attack a renewable energy system depends more on how these systems are designed and how the demand side develops than on whether the resource is renewable or not.

Renewable energy systems can be designed to have a low risk of being attacked. For example, decentralised renewable systems with a high level of resilience have a very low risk of being attacked because the effects of an attack would be low.

Renewable energy can cause local conflicts that involve non-state actors, such as ecological conflicts. Preventing such conflicts requires development of local institutional capacities. The involvement of non-state actors in conflicts at sub-national scale illustrates that it can be beneficial to approach renewable energy conflicts from a broader and deeper perspective on security than conflicts related to fossil resources.

(By Denzil Walton - Leonardo-energy)