Energy, Economics, and Ethics: The Promise and Peril of a Global Energy Transition

We are in the midst of an enormous global energy transition happening before our eyes. Alternative energy forms including solar, wind, water, and bio-fuels are challenging the established energy sources that have fuelled the industrial era for the past century.
As we look to this century’s energy future an examination of the past is important to understand how these choices will be made. What political, economic, and ethical lessons can be learned from how coal, oil, and natural gas became the power of the 20th century? Are those lessons instrumental in determining future decisions about emerging alternative energy choices?
The opportunities and the risks involved in making, or not making these choices are enormous. Through case studies and examples of past and present development of energy sources, the story is told of the global energy industry. In its telling Energy, Economics, and Ethics wrestles with many of the difficult questions at the heart of the emerging global energy transition

Kenneth Martens Friesen is an Associate Professor of International Studies and History at Fresno Pacific University.